Ironically, the secular parallel mentioned in the last blog is precisely what Progressives see in Christians; a stupidity that takes the Bible literally and a reliance on “sanctifying grace” that amounts to “not knowing any different”.  Christians are simpletons.  They do not know any different.

Progressives take Science literally.  They wear the label “we know different”.

But, with their pursuit of sovereign power in order to control and regulate the simpletons, with their hope of implementing an order based on their mythical unifying vision of what once controlled the impersonal structures of institutions, with their demand that a state of exception override all fragmentation of society (that is inherent in unconstrained complexity), they betray their longing.

Progressives long to return to the world before speech-alone talk.  They long for the days when words referred to things and we did not know any different.

Christian anxiety is real because we have already lost our xiety, a divine gift that parallels God’s creative acts of making our souls.

An Archaeology of the Fall proposes an evolutionary perspective for this loss:  A transition from hand-speech to speech-alone talk potentiated not only the emergence of Civilization (unconstrained complexity) but a permanent disorientation, because the semiotic indexality or referentiality that imbued hand-speech was replaced by the semiotic symbolic ordering or social construction that imbues speech-alone talk.

In short, the secular parallel to the sanctifying grace that preceded Eve and Adam, and was withdrawn as punishment for their transgression, was “the gift of referentiality or literalness” and “the gift of not knowing any different” that permeated the world of our ancestors.  This was the world that humans evolved in.  In this world, words referred to things.  And we did not know any different.

Christians discovered that the principle binding soul to body was God’s creative activity.

In parallel, the Christian’s xiety (what they have, could have had, or pretend to have) may be a divine gift.

If this is so, then Christian anxiety would be the fear of the loss of this gift.

There is a certain beauty in deduction, is there not?  The irony contained in the divine gift – the holy creative activity – binding soul to body – is that – already for us – the divine gift has been compromised.  This (not some human propensity to anxiety, rage and violence) is Original Sin.

From a theological point of view, the babe has a soul that is bound to her body through some principle.  Somehow, this parallels the way that I am bound to my anxiety through my xiety.

After its creation, the soul, in a way, has no life of its own but can have any life.  The potential of the soul is infinite.  At the end of the person’s life, the soul has a life of her own and can pretend to have another life (as ghost or as in “possession”), but it cannot “live the life it could have had”.  The potential of the soul has been realized.

This, I sense, matches Jung’s cryptotheological psychoanalytical term: “individuation”.  Individuation is the principle by which the soul fulfills its potential.

Like xiety, the “this individuating principle” exists in the realm of possibility, accounts for the actualities of human behavior, and is bound to the real.

For xiety, the Lebenswelt is real.  For the principle, the binding is real.

“The soul” and “the principle binding soul to body” are ancient formulations that led to philosophical controversy.   In fact, these formulations produced the first controversy that set (what later would be called) Christians on the path to articulating the Doctrine of Original Sin: What is this “principle, mechanism or whatever” that binds the soul to the body?

Today, we face a parallel question, what is the xiety that bind me to my anxiety?

Now, I will consider the implications of xiety.

When a babe is born into the world, she has both no xiety and an infinite amount of xiety.  She has no life of her own.  She could have any life.  This inner contradiction means that xiety exists in the world of possibility.

The babe has natural expectations.  She expects a Lebenswelt in which she will first bond to her mother, then have that bond modified while bonding to her father.  In a way, the Lebenswelt is the first xiety.   The need for the Lebenswelt is painfully actual and if these needs are not met, then the babe’s anxiety sets the stage for her becoming a psychopath.  A psychopath is person in complete faith^UnChristian that “all she has is herself”.

By framing this chapter in terms of “unfaith” and “lack of trust”, Peters avoided a multitude of sins.  What multitude?  It seems to me that most sins are not committed for lack of “faith”, but in a surplus of “faith” that is not Christian.

Perhaps I can depict this alternate faith as faith^UnChristian.

With that, I can turn Peters’ final formalism around.

“Faith^UnChristian” tells us what is “unacceptable”.  “Faith^UnChristian” makes xiety possible.  This gives rise to anxiety: The fear of the loss of one’s xiety, the life that one has, that one could have, or that one pretends to have; according to one’s faith^UnChristian.

Peters related an incident in his own life concerning “consuming rage”.  A neighborhood bully drove him over the edge.  The child Peters struck back.  This act was unacceptable to the moms in the neighborhood and he was forced to apologize, even though the bully had the injury coming to him.

What was the child Peters defending himself against?  His anxiety was the fear of the loss that this bully could impose.  Peters was protecting his xiety, the life that he could have had (if the bully never existed).

Peters told another story about a California boy who became an active homosexual then got outed by his own brother (and his brother’s friend).  He ended up confronting his brother’s friend, begging to get his old life back (perhaps, the life that he could have had but was compromised by his own sexual activity; or perhaps, the life that he pretended to have as if he were not sexually active).  His brother’s friend rebuffed him.  So he shot his brother’s friend with an Uzi.

After these and other stories, Peters served the blandishments of tired inevitability, concluding that anxiety and rage, along with the violence they generate, are part of the human condition.  He threw in the word “Original Sin” in order to spice up the dish.  If only we had faith (in Christ), then we might have the common sense not to give in to “consuming rage”.

With faith (in Christ), we could accept the unacceptable: the xiety of living in the shadow of a bully and the xiety of the label of “faggot” and the look of humiliation in the eyes of one’s father and mother.

“Unfaith” is a treacherous word.

Peters used the word in reference to the Christian Standard of Faith.  He quoted Matthew 6:31-33 in that regard.

He then went on to associate lack of faith with a lack of trust in other people, which, in turn, leads to a lack of love.  And who loves people less than Psychopathic Killers, who rely on the love, trust, and faith of their victims in order to entrap and kill them?

Is “unfaith” the beginning of a turn that diminishes other people’s existence through manipulation, insensitivity, betrayal and injury?  Or is “unfaith” an alternate “faith”?

If you take a babe and deny her the bonding experience with her mother, and she develops mistrust and deep-seated rage, and she ends up as a child without a conscience, does she lack “faith”?  Or has she found another faith, a “light to sustain her”, a “belief that allows her to hold on to what she has” by “depriving others of what they have”?  Is not her faith: “consuming rage”?  “Consuming rage” is a gift that keeps giving.

The serial murderer Ted Bundy did not suffer from anxiety.  He was a completely illuminated by the dark light that sustained him.  He was also consciously aware that what he was doing was in service to his “faith”; that is, his “consuming rage”.

So do people kill others in order to relieve their own fear of being killed?  Or do they kill others in order to relieve their fear that the mere existence of the other threatens “something that they have, or could have had, or pretend to have”?

Did Becker title his book The Structure of Evil?  Or was it Escape from Evil?  Did he write out of a fear of loss?  Did he write for his own self-esteem?

Ernest Becker located anxiety in the “modern” denial of death.  But An Archaeology of the Fall suggests an alternate situation: Anxiety is not “not knowing any better”.

Anxiety is the fear of being without your xiety.

People are anxious because they fear they will lose xiety, not only what they have, but what they could have had, or even pretend to have.

Xiety is perceived as actual, so actual that people can commit any crime in fear of this loss – of what they have – of what they could have had – of what they pretend to have.

People kill others in order to continue their charades.

So Peters’ next chapter addresses the question: What makes xiety possible?

Could “not knowing any different” equal the “unifying vision that once controlled the impersonal structures of institutions” that was lost in “modern” social fragmentation?

Consider, social fragmentation draws the individual into a type of social bondage, where one is held within a particular “language’ community, say, the community of Plumbers, that is further reinforced by the existence of other “language” communities that one does not belong to, such as the community of Electricians.

The fragmentation induces anxiety to the extent that the Plumber imagines that she could have been an Electrician.  Anxiety promotes neurotic behaviors, which block actions, close options, and increase one’s own bondage.  Anxiety also inspires one to pretend to be what (one could be but) is not.  For example, an anxious Plumber (who imagines that she could have been an Electrician) may mess up a project by telling the Electrician how to do her job; that is, by pretending to be the Electrician as well as the Plumber.

The Plumber has a choice.  She may try to impose her own meanings on the Electrician or she may step back and imagine that “she does not know any different”.

But “letting go” does not make “more choices and freedom available to me”, which is what Becker wanted.  Well, Becker wanted more than that.  He wanted to re-generate his mythical unifying vision that once controlled the impersonal structures of institutions.

According to Becker, with this unifying vision, the Plumber could pretend.  She could have been an Electrician if she had wanted to be.  Pretending would give her self-esteem.  Self-esteem is the only way to escape the bondage of psychological determinism that comes from fragmentation.  Self-esteem is the surest basis for selflessness and social harmony, especially when it comes from Becker’s mythical unifying vision that controls the impersonal structures of institutions.

In this way, Ernest Becker, like so many of his day, defined himself as a Great Progressive Thinker.

He could have stepped back, and imagined that “he did not know any different” in order to “let go” and free himself of the anxiety of all the lives that he could have lived but never did.  He could have been a painter, a chauffer, a paramour to an old lady with henna red hair, a connoisseur of cigars, a Nazi collaborator, or a member of the Resistance.  He could have been what his mother wanted him to be … he could have been anything except … a person without anxiety, a person who “did not know any different”, living in the ultimate wonderland of constrained complexity, where every word was grounded in the Real.