The real danger to writing is one becomes facile with language. Words tumble out, oft unbidden, and arrange themselves in a neat little phalanx of meaning. The reader can then invest the loquacious array with the depth of his own understanding or the reaches of her particular need.
Kant was not all wrong or even mostly wrong, except possibly for his supposed disassociation of philosophical thought with God, or god, or gods or the cosmos. Immanuel would not have understood, nor been sympathetic with, the current row over man as cosmic accident or the product of intelligent design, since he was not so interested at starting with beginnings as he was with finding the meaning for the man of the now.
That explanation given, Kant the writer was limited to the usual accomodational linguistic dilemma all writers face in some way; meaning, what we mean and what our readers think we mean. Kant was doomed to write primarily in a language given neither to expressiveness in written or spoken word. One can peruse his syntax for hours searching in vain for a verb, reading until one's eyes bleed for a modifier of mood. Germans can write opera or deep thought but their expressions are historically as dense as the ancient Black Forest. You almost wish their philosophers and composers and, most especially, their theologians, had just hidden together in the forest primeval and left the rest of us alone with Heraclitus, who was, one hears, a fun guy in the agora, at least.
So, understand the paramount paroxysm of self-doubt with which I offer this Fridayian Exposition. Since I think, it must be that God is and since I can conceive of a God who cares and cannot conceive of a God who does not care, it must be that God is and that God cares. It is no less rational to believe God exists because I can think than it is to believe that I exist because I can cognitively explore the inner and outer cosmos. I think, therefore God is and I need, so God cares.
My tortured friend, Biff, does God's work. He is a research scientist of some repute. He is in the process of killing himself, which thing God does not require, to commercialize a process by which trauma wounds can be more quickly identified and medicine rushed to the offended area. He commercializes the process because in the Western World, that is the cultural metaphor for acceptance and wide spread use.
Understand that every communique from him is exquisitely painful; his sheer, unadulterated joy in research, discovery and application, wedded to the constant moral crisis of making the work prove itself by paying for itself. The second pill we buy costs $2 to produce. The first one costs $5,000,000 and the prohibitive start-up expenditure is what keeps us sick. Biff has to be scientist-explorer and venture capitalist. He is doing God's work.
Biff is right to do the responsible, unhealthy, cost-intensive, painstaking research to offer a new healing touch to humankind. He is almost certainly wrong to kill himself with the stress and anxiety but this bi-polarity also seems to fulfill some need in him. He embodies the emotional bifurcation of the human race, so I make him my example today, for he is the paragon of tension, the God of the hard pulled elastic strap, kept taught between two strugglers, neither able to gain the advantage but both too invested to let go. Biff is different in only one way from most of us. He is pulling both sides of the strap, exhausting himself against himself and so certain of victory and doomed to failure.
I think, so I believe that God is and, since I can conceive of a God who cares and cannot imagine a God who does not care, I believe that God is and that God cares. What I do every day matters. There is a purpose to this life.
I love Biff even thought I have never met him. Attractive people are those who throw themselves into their calling. Unfortunately, I find few attractive people today. Tell Biff to take care of himself, we need more, not fewer, of his kind.
Posted by: MR | February 06, 2009 at 04:47 PM