12/23/14

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 2B

Hmmm, the previous blog points to a type of mimetic rivalry that would yield reproductive advantage under the selection pressures of intergroup competition.

But of course, such a ‘thing’ …

…was not meant to last, at least as far as human evolution goes.

In the milieu of unconstrained complexity, inaugurated 7800 years ago, the desire “to sacrifice oneself for the most important object in the group, in mimesis of the desire held by all the others in the group” became a fool’s errand.

Someone, by manipulating the symbolic order, could accrue the rewards and the credit for your sacrifice.

Plus, in a strange variant of the predator-prey relation, someone could demand your sacrifice because “you should feel that you should sacrifice yourself for the most important object in the group”.

And, for that special someone, it is that Special Someone: ‘me’.

12/22/14

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 2A

How would the idea of “mimesis” apply to our evolved Lebenswelt of constrained complexity, marked by selection pressures of intergroup competition?

What advantage would there be for each person to desire the same thing (that someone else desires) and to unconsciously deny that the other person – somehow – inspired the desire?

I cannot see an advantage, except for one circumstance.

What if that “thing” was an “object that was the most important object in the group”?

What if that object was so important that each person – by ‘himself’ (but in mimetic desire) – was open to sacrificing ‘himself’ for this object?

What if each person would seek opportunities to engage in some life and death struggle centered on the object?

If so, then any person in the group could be a hero, even in death, especially if ‘his’ death ended a horrible passage and allowed others to continue to live, that is, to keep the object alive.

To keep the object alive was to keep the group alive.  To keep the object alive was to allow your parents, your children, your cousins, your brothers and sisters, to live.

12/19/14

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 1C

Still, we are led to the question:

How did Girard’s “mimetic rivalry” operate in the Lebenswelt of constrained complexity, that is, in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?

How could “mimetic rivalry” have enhanced “reproductive success” (the new term for “survival of the fittest”)?

It seems to me that “mimetic rivalry”, as Girard formulates the concept, would have increased intragroup competition and conflict (even with the catharsis of scapegoating).  Mimetic rivalry would have diminished reproductive success in a world of intergroup competition.

12/18/14

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 1B

Alberg presented a quick summary of Girard’s ideas (xiv-xvi, 14-16).  This summary affirms my suspicions that An Archaeology of the Fall places a discontinuity right in the middle of Girard’s hypothesis.

An Archaeology proposes that, 7800 years ago, humans began to change the way they talked, from hand-speech talk to speech alone talk, and the difference in semiotic qualities potentiated unconstrained complexity; that is, civilization.

“The world that we evolved in” is not the same as “the world that we live in”.

The world of constrained complexity is not the same as the world of unconstrained complexity.

Girard’s concept of mimetic rivalry pertains to our current Lebenswelt of unconstrained complexity.  Literature is full of it.  As we all know, or at least, as Girard convincingly argues, (what we once called) “literature” provides greater insight into the workings of the human mind than what we call “social science”.

But then, social science has its own “literature”.  How confusing is that?]

12/17/14

Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 1A

Lately, I have been wresting (if blogging can be called that) with Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of a “scandal” in biology.

God declared His Creation “good” in Genesis. However, natural evil is intrinsic to evolution.  This is a scandal.

Coincidently, I came across a book on scandal in the tradition of Rene Girard, entitled Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses: Reading Scandalous Texts, by Jeremiah L. Alberg (East Lansing: Michigan University Press).

So, a diversion is in order.

My electronic book, An Archaeology of the Fall (2012), complements Alberg’s exploration, in a way that would make Flannery O’Connor proud.  If you read it, you will see what I mean.

You will also see why Rene Girard has appeared on my radar, not as dramatically as Charles Peirce and John Deely, or Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Zizek, or Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, but there, nevertheless.  So far, I have contemplated his work through the eyes of his admirers.

12/16/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.6AL5

[But then, what is scandal?

Scandals are crucial distractions.  They are like gargoyles on the facade of a church.  They repulse yet mark an entrance.  To focus on them is to remain on the outside.  To seek them out is to find an entrance.

The scandal itself serves as a barrier to seeing below the surface.  Yet, scandals are located at places where one should be looking.

How do we look below the surface?  How do we enter the door denoted by scandal?

Read the text with an attitude of forgiveness.   You will find insights in the text that were unknown (at least consciously) to the author.  These ideas linger below the surface.  They might have been embraced, if the author could have seen past the gargoyles.

This brings me to an interlude.

For the next few weeks, this blog will consider Jeremy Alberg’s book Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses (2013).

This book is all about scandal.]

12/12/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.6AL3

[This is one lesson: When it comes to our moment in eternity, we are all provincials.  De Chardin and Schoonenberg were both “universal men” in the middle of the 20th century.  We must read them with a sense of forgiveness, for imagining that they were “universal”.  After all, modern Western intellectuals in the 20th century posed as “universal” thinkers.

Such an idea was presumptuous.  Maybe, we ought call it “scandalous”.

The issue is not that modern Western intellectuals were monstrously wrong.

Nor is the issue the fact that that Schoonenberg cannot account for his scholastic and modern claims.  He knows that the claims are true because they resolve centuries of controversy.  He knows that they are true because of scientific advance.  But he cannot account for them.]

12/11/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.6AL2

[Consider these differences:

A versus B:  “Order” versus “Chaos”

A1 versus A2: “Designed Order” versus “Spontaneous Order”

A2A versus A2B: “Spontaneous Order viewed through eyes evolved to see design” versus “Spontaneous Order viewed through the lens of statistics, that is, chance and necessity, devoid of instrumental causes and formal requirements”

What are the options?

To me, Schoonenberg and de Chardin concluded that only the options A1 and A2B could be entertained.  But they bridled at that conclusion.

Suprasovereign Christianity promoted A1. The (infra)sovereign “Believers of Reason” promoted A2B.

My guess is that de Chardin wanted Christians to see that option A2B made sense, hoping that it could be transcended.

My guess is that Schoonenberg would have articulated option A2A if he knew what we know fifty years later.]

12/10/14

Man and Sin by Piet Schoonenberg (1964) 1.6AL1

Summary of text [comment] page 47

[Neither Schoonenberg nor de Chardin had the advantage of knowing Friedrich von Hayek’s concept of “spontaneous order” or John Deely’s ideas in semiotics or even key points in that must-read book: An Archaeology of the Fall.

I find it amazing they got as far as they did.

Their efforts may be seen as trials, attempting to forge a “button” to go into the “buttonhole” of “Creation”, once the button of tradition slipped from its mooring.

Neither “creationism” (with its Augustinian exclusion of evolutionary change) nor “pure chance and necessity” (with its Modern exclusion of our evolved sensibilities, that is, our evolved capacity to see design) worked.

Schoonenberg and de Chardin refused to choose between divine determinism and purposeless accidents of nature.]