To be or to act? That is the question.

What is the point of acting? It can be the embodying of goodness. We can see something worthy of our praise fleshed out before us. We are not merely praising the acting. A great play or a good movie can provide us with perspectives on a worthy life that might be hard to otherwise capture in our daily living.

Yet, it seems to me that some verisimilitude between our mundane lives and the lives portrayed on the stage is required. The actor bears a great responsibility in this. Somehow, she or he must convince us that they are somehow like us. Yet, they must also make us believe that they are different enough to bear our scrutiny.

At some point, a transition occurs. A mystery is revealed. I am drawn out of my world and into an other. I am decentred. Yet, I am central to the unfolding that takes place. I offer up my credulity. If the actor is up to it and the writing can bear the weight, I am borne away into another dimension. For a time, perhaps only for a breath, a worthier life is glimpsed.

Poetry as a species of imitation

It might be worth elaborating on what I mean by poetics. I will draw upon Aristotle for inspiration. I know that some are likely to howl. What can I do? I think Aristotle was wise about most things. And, when he was wrong, he was wrong in the right way. He was willing for something to be put straight.

Heath’s translation of Poetics has it thus:

Epic poetry and the composition of tragedy, as well as comedy and the arts of dithyrambic poetry and (for the most part) of music for pipe or lyre, are all (taken together) imitations. They can be differentiated from each other in three respects: in respect of their different media of imitation, or different objects, or a different mode (i.e. a different manner). (Health 1996:3, emphasis in the original)

The medium (matter) of film can include color, motion, and sound (musical, ambient and languaged). The object (subjects) can relate to either tragedy or comedy. In this regard, Aristotle contends that those who seek to imitate are imitating agents (Health 1996:5). These agents are either superior or inferior to ourselves if we differentiate according to tragedy or comedy. The mode (method) of imitation is either through narration or action.

Of course, it is possible to have both comedy and tragedy in the same imitative practice. The subtle combination helps to create contrasts. It also helps clear the palate as it were when we must taste the bitter sweet moments of imitation.

Importantly, Aristotle associates imitation of the superior character with excellence. He associates the inferior with defect. Arete, excellence, can be equated with virtue. However, it is somewhat broader in scope than our typical understanding of virtue. It means being the best that you can be according to a standard, a purpose or a kind.

When it is used in relationship with raising and educating children, there were three areas of greatest concern to the Greeks. The first was physical training for excellence. The Olympic ideals are derived from this concern. For males, there was a direct relationship with the ability to fight for and defend one’s city.

There was mental training which included the ability to speak persuasively, to think critically and to judge wisely. This had to do with the right use of the intelligence of a person in a situation or context whether physical or social.

Finally, there was spiritual training through music and the arts which stimulated an awareness of proportionality. This proportionality was translated into the practical life. Here, we come closer to the more common understanding of virtue. When living in community, this meant a balancing of virtue between vices. For instance, courage is the mean between cowardice on the one hand and a risky bravado on the other.

Health, M. (1996) Aristotle’s Poetics. Ringwood, VIC: Penguin.

Memory as memorial of what might be

In her Hudson Review article, Emily Grosholz recounts the work of some of her favourite poets. Most are male as befits the title of the article, Masculine Poetics: Works, Days and Cars. The female poets mentioned are more than mere foils. But, the focus of the review is on the poetry of select males writing in English.

What is repeatedly emphasized is the instantiation of memory. Memory may well be personal and intimate. Yet, such poetry need not disclose the poet in the present or in the presence of contemporaries. Still, embodiment is important. A person, place or process is encountered, engaged or ensconced in memory, which becomes memorial. 

Apart from the mention of a cover illustration, this is all done through words. Words evoke images. Sometimes these are powerful visions that rise up from the ground like the dead prophet, Samuel, before proud Saul at the behest of the Witch of Endor. A witch who was much surprised by her deft feat. Will our words bring a blessing or a curse? Will they comfort or discomfit?

Images called forth by words, whether written or spoken. Yet, images bear themselves forth in film. The word is not master in this medium. We can struggle to frame a film’s obvious meaning in words. Charles Saunders Peirce, the American philosopher, often saw what he was thinking without being able to say what he thought. We can see what we mean or feel through film. This is done with or without words.

Grosholtz lauded her poets’ ability to move beyond the empirical. The empirical can bind us to what is or has been, merely. A sign can open us up to the necessary and the possible that are both yet to be. The vagueness that often accompanies the activity of a sign is like a doorway leading us from the prison of what is; it is a threshold to what could be.

The poetics of masculinity, the imitation of the moral action of men, does not merely inform us of what is. It can transform us into being what we could be. What do John Wayne and John Ford disclose to us through film? That is the question to be asked and, tentatively, answered many times in this blog.

As an earnest, let me suggest that this understanding of the poetics of masculinity helps to clarify a puzzling discourse at the end of Fort Apache. The portrayal of Colonel Thursday, as gallant in defeat, provides a meaningful context for those who continue to do their duty at the margins of society. What is being discussed is not really a painting of what was empirically. Instead, it is a memorial of what could be and, indeed, what is being embodied by those who remain and remember.

Grosholz, E. (2006) Masculine Poetics: Works, days and cars. The Hudson Review. 56(3):500-508.

The gendering of angels?

C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. Most people very likely knows this. But, I wonder how many know about his science-fiction (or, as Freeman Dyson suggests, his theo-fiction) works? There were three: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.

In the middle book, C.S. Lewis reflects on the gender of angels. I raise this because he describes them as lacking sexual differentiation. Most of us, even the most sophisticated, still subtly conflate sex and gender in our daily thinking.

Yet, Lewis does something interesting. He suggests that sexual differentiation does not realistically represent true gender distinctions. There is some correlation. But, starting with sexual distinction is more likely to lead to muddled thinking, rather than adequate modeling.

At this point, Lewis is swimming against the main current of thought which holds that gender is fundamentally a social construction. Lewis rejects this. He would suggest that social construction has what might be termed an objective founding. There is a cornerstone to all human construing that is reasonable and steadfastly resists our attempts to refashion.

Additionally, Lewis wants to maintain what many would call a binary opposition between the genders. But, he does so in order to afford the possibility of a complimentary collaboration in which neither gender is greater nor lesser than the other. There is a true distinction, but this does not justify any fundamental disassociation or denigration.

What has this got to do with angels? Well, it is an interesting thought experiment. While angels are considered to be sexless, that does not necessarily mean that they are not be gendered. In Wiemar Germany, the Jewish-Catholic phenomenologist, Edith Stein, explored similar territory somewhat earlier than Lewis.

Many today would find Stein’s essentialist orientation unacceptable. But, she was arguing that there was no domain from which women should be excluded simply because they were women. In fact, she maintained that women would bring a unique dimension to each vocation that was complementary to what men might bring.

Neither one gender nor the other was ‘better’. But, each gender is different. While sexual differentiation is an aspect of this for humans, it is not what is distinctive. It makes you wonder what might be engendered in our societies if we could maintain a distinction without discrimination in terms of justice and equity.

The scholastic thinkers were not wasting their time when they considered the question of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. This was merely a means of asking questions about time and space, spirit and matter, cause and effect. The question did, and still does, matter in terms of making proper distinctions. So does gender.

Has Lewis offered a means of engaging in a quality conversation about this often contested and controversial area of our lives? Perhaps. Perhaps not; but, it is worth asking a few questions.

Relationship: An immaterial reality

In their book, Magna Carta Latina (The Privilege of Singing, Articulating and Reading a Language and of Keeping It Alive), Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Ford Lewis Battles discuss what articulation means in terms of language.  Importantly, they understand that speech is not merely a device for attracting attention and eliciting a mere response. This would be what Percy talks about in terms of a dyadic relation of cause and effect.

According to Rosenstock-Huessy and Battles (1975:14), when some one speaks to another one, they are saying something like, “Listen!”. And, the second one responses to the first one by saying, either literally or in effect, “I am listening.” Each of the ones becomes involved in a pairing through an event which is neither visible nor audible as is the case when two computers “handshake” as a condition for “communication” between them.

The event of pairing is not to be found in the words as it is with the data “handshake” of the computer. While the possibility of pairing is signaled by the words, it is not effected by the words themselves. Still, the event of the human pairing is just as, if not more, real than the words whether uttered or written.

A few important things are happening here. In the first place, someone is seeking to set up a relationship with another. This person means for something to happen and he or sheknows that this is what is meant. Secondly, another person signals that they know what is meant and that they are ready to take the role of a listener. Something is shared that both parties acknowledge.

Finally, indicating that he or she is listening to the other maintains the identity of the listener. An “I” is listening to a “you”. There is a relationship between a first and a second that is mediated by a third, a mutual understanding. You cannot see this mutual understanding and you cannot hear it; but, you know that it exists in its effects. Further, the relationship is also mediated by a mutual commitment to collaboration or cooperation. There is a responsibility that is undertaken by each one.

The authors make an important point:

A sentence is a personal relation between answerable people. Articulated speech is communication between responsible people. (Rosenstock-Huessy and Battles 1975:15)

As far was we know, in the whole universe, there is only one species that can create such relationships. We can say of people that they are answerable to each other because of their shared understanding of how things are or could be. We are beings who are responsible to and for each other.

Delving into the divided creature

As a public health practitioner, I share many of the concerns faced by Walker Percy, the physician. He was fascinated by the universe and the people who inhabited their worlds within that universe. Science* should be a valuable tool for exploring the whole of this mystery. Yet, Percy contended that modern science is incoherent when it tries to understand humanity specifically as human rather than biological or neurological.

He further contended that the view of world that we have derived from modern science is also incoherent. This arises from a bifurcation introduced by Descartes some three hundred years ago. He contended that there was mind and body. How they interact is left unexplained.

Fundamentally, we think that the latter (material) is real and the former (mind) problematic. Where can the reality of mind be located in space? Are we really left with a ghost in the machine?

So, Percy argued that science is incoherent, because no matter how much they might try, a “brain” scientist qua “brain” scientist (e.g., Skinner) and a “mind” scientist qua “mind” scientist (e.g., Jung) cannot bridge the gap (Percy 1989:79).

Perhaps the oddest thing about these incoherences is the fact that we do not find them odd…We do not find it odd to jump from the natural science of the biology of creatures to a formal science of the utterances of this particular creature without knowing how we got there (p.80).

It was Charles Saunders Peirce who suggested that the place to bridge the divide was at the very point where mind and matter meet: language. Language is a combination of words and meanings. You can see or hear words. You cannot hear or see meanings. Yet, both are real, both are natural events.

Words, as spoken or written, are an example of a dyadic event. Air passes by the vocal cords and causes a vibration that is shaped by the tongue, teeth and lips to produce a particular sound. A hand articulates through a series of movements using a stylus and an symbol appears on a wax tablet. We can hear, see, or touch these.

However, we cannot see, hear or touch the meaning of the sound or the symbol. A third appears in our intellect, our insight, but not to our sight. We grasp a connection between what is pronounced or impressed and some other. A triadic relation is created, elaborated or elucidated. This relation is immaterial. Yet, it is the foundation of so much that is human.

What is important, what distinguishes us from other animals, is not the fact that we use these relationships to navigate through our worlds. Animals do this as well. What makes us different is the fact that we can study, know and understand the significance of these relationships.

We can name reality. We, thereby, know that reality more fully. We can also modify the modelling that makes for our life-world. The modelling is of first importance. Communication, important as it is, is secondary.

For Peirce, semiotics is the study of the immaterial activity of signs that allows us to navigate the material and more. Both the dyadic (causal events) and the triadic (relational events) are natural and can be investigated in an integral fashion. We are only just beginning to develop the capacity to do this after a rather tragic false turn. We need no longer be divided creatures.

*”When I say science, I mean science in the root sense of the word, as the discovery and knowledge of something which can be demonstrated and verified within a community” (Percy 1989:77).

Walker Percy (1989) The Divided Creature. The Wilson Quarterly 13(3):77-87.

Dis-Covering the Delta Factor

In my work as a public health practitioner, I must constantly balance two realities.The first is currently the easiest to understand and deal with. It has to do with relationships that are fundamentally oriented towards energy exchange and are often embedded in hierarchies of systems.

Homoeostatic functioning would be an example. Humans are seen as organisms operating in their environment seeking to find an optimum balancing of energy systems in order to overcome the proximal effects of entropy. These are important models for helping us to understand and explain salient aspects of the various interactions.

The second reality is harder to understand or explain in terms of linear energy exchanges. Frankly, we are in danger of loosing our grip on this side of reality. There is the continuous danger of reducing what is distinctly human into a mere excrescence of the first reality.

The technocrats of the first reality have had their heyday. It is increasingly obvious that they cannot deal with everything. However, these technocrats continuously vie with one another to maintain a position of dominance in our culture.

Their way of looking at reality continues to carry the day on our television sets and in our public polemics. It does so in subtle and in not so subtle ways. It has left a whole society vulnerable to the predations of advertising men and the apologists for the growing dystopia.

We should not gainsay the continued importance of the first reality. Yet, we require a more adequate accounting for the whole of reality.

Walker Percy sought to explicate an important difference between humans and other organisms. He also tried to extricate his readers from the grip of a new manifestation of Leviathan. The issues leave those of the Matrix in the dust.

Or, rather, the moral of the Matrix trilogy is exactly what Percy was fighting against. He was offering a way of waking up which meant that something could be truly different. Waking up would not merely be a means of resolving all of the anomalies of a continuously dominant machine system.

We are not ultimately part of a system of eternal iterations and adaptations.

The “Delta Factor” was decisive for Percy. He was speaking about, and I will keep exploring, “a nonlinear nonenergetic natural phenomenon (that is to say, a natural phenomenon in which energy exchanges account for some but not all of what happens)” (Percy, The Message in the Bottle, 1975, p. 39). It will take us some time to even begin to sketch out what this means.

I would suggest that it is more than worth the while for the sake of a truly public health.

Focal Things, Focal Practices

Albert Borgmann has written extensively on what he termed the device paradigm. He contrasts this to his understanding of focal things. If you are cold and you walk to the thermostat to turn up the heat, you are employing a device. A device, as device, does not connect you to your world. It does not bring coherence to an increasingly fragmented way of living and it does not allow you to provide care for others.

A wood stove affords such opportunities. As my father used to say when I was younger, ‘If you chop wood for the fire, you warm yourself twice.’ Stoking a fire well takes skill. You have to pay attention to what you are doing. It requires preparation and an engagement that transforms you as well as your world. Tending a fire is an act of caring for yourself and others.

The word ‘focal’ recalls its Latin root, the hearth. The hearth was the focal point of the home, its heart. It provided warmth. Food was cooked here. Light was provided for evening tasks as well. While household gods were superseded by knick-nacks and family photos, the mantel of a fireplace still maintained something of the sense of an altar. There was a place for the sacred.

Focal practices guard focal things. I still remember how my father taught me to light a fire. There is a process, a priority of actions. Each step leads the practitioner further down the path towards an excellence. In many cultures, the maintaining of the embers and their transfer from one location to another was a real symbol of the flame of life. Carelessness might forfeit the means of lighting a new fire. This could spell disaster to a person, family or community.

Now, I am older and in Australia. Autumn is Lent and Easter here. Advent is a penitential season. So is Lent. Penance. Not much call for that these days is there? Just fast forward and 'forget your regret'. Yet, just the other day, I remembered and was chagrined.

No one else would recall it. No one, but me. Perhaps. I suspect that there are many tendrils on that stray thought. I am hesitant to pull too hard lest I discover what else might surface. Penance. Having the courage to put right what was, or remains, wrong. Making right the relationship wronged. Can it be done decades later? In the 'graced' moment, we can begin.

That's another quality of Autumn. It is a time of hauling in the nets and repairing the damage done in the course of living. There is an Autumn in each day, week, month and year. There is an Autumn in each life. Perhaps the nets will be useful to the next generation.

Or, they may seek to leave the island of our ancient habitation. They may be off to new digs and experiences. Still, they may just be taking the same old people with them into the wider world.

Michael Powell, who would later become one half of the Archers with Emeric Pressburger, undertook his first major project as a director to capture this story, The Edge of the World. Rotten Tomatoes rates it at 100%. It is stunning in its beauty and poignant as a story. The cynic and the slick operator may smirk; but, the thoughtful recognize the signs.

How do we deal with our rash self-assertion or our cowardly failure to be true to who we are? Gently, but firmly. Penance is about a true assessment of what needs to be done. Then, it is also about making amends. Reconciliation is possible even in the face of death and dissolution. Faith, hope and love need not fail. At the 'edge of the world' in the Antipodes, Easter in Autumn reminds us of this.

When I was young, Autumn was a magic season. The wild wonder of Summer was over. Long days of play gave way to shorter days chock full of school work. I did not mind. I loved the freedom of Summer, but Autumn held you accountable. You felt that you had become more adult somehow; more responsible.

I always marveled at the changing colors of the leaves. The pumpkin and corn ripening and being harvested. The nip in the air that I knew as Jack Frost. The migration of birds. The preparation for hibernation among reptiles and mammals. Autumn was hunting season when we provided for winter meat. We learned to be more disciplined in our movements and alert to what was happening around us.

While Summer had one notable public holiday, the Fourth of July, Autumn began with Labor Day in September. It moved quickly towards Halloween and Thanksgiving. Labor Day to remind us of what workers have done and are doing. Halloween reminding us of our long-term contract with the dead. Thanksgiving as a reminder of what it is to be an alien in want of life's goods and needing the support of others to obtain them.

Perhaps that is the quality of Autumn for me; a time to be alert to what was going on around me.

And, as Autumn changes to Winter, there is the Advent season. Here is a time for a more profound listening. It is a sort of listening that wakes you up in the dead of night because deep in the silence something is heard within the heart. The year will soon change; perhaps I too will change.

But, it begins with the gathering in of Autumn.