Alan Jacobs

William Deresiewicz:

No, secularism cannot reassure us that the universe is governed by a benevolent deity, or that the wicked will be punished and the good rewarded, or that our souls will be clasped after death in the bosom of Abraham. But in leaving us to our devices, it does something better, because it does something truer. It forces us into the search: for truth, for beauty, for justice. 

The notion that secularism forces some unspecified “us” into searching for truth, beauty, and justice is a purely religious notion; and a more spectacular example of wishful thinking than any other religion has ever managed to put forth. 

Rowan Williams:

Our ancestors, right up to the modern age, knew they were fragile. A brief period of dazzling technological achievement combined with the absence of any major global war produced the belief that fragility was on the retreat and that making our global environment lastingly secure or controllable was within reach. But the same technical achievements that had generated this belief turned out to be among the major destabilising influences in the material environment. And the absence of major global conflict sat alongside the proliferation of bitter and vicious local struggles, often civil wars that trailed on for decades. But perhaps it is only in the past two decades that we have quite caught up with the realisation that global crises are indifferent to national boundaries, political convictions and economic performance. The vulnerability cannot be neatly cordoned off.

For the foreseeable future, we shall have to get used to this fragility; and we are going to need considerable imaginative resources to cope with it. In the past, people have found resources like this in art and religion. Today it is crucial to learn to see the sciences as a resource and not a threat or a rival to what these older elements offer. It is more than high time to forget the phoney war between faith and science or art and technology.

I don’t often read the New York Times, but when I do, I prefer to use lynx.

Karth Barth, in a 1934 talk: 

For what we have experienced in Germany during these latter days — this remarkable apostasy of the Church to nationalism, and I am sure that every one of you is horrified and says in his heart: I thank thee, God, that I am not a German Christian! — I assure you that it will be the end of your road, too. It has its beginning with “Christian life” and ends in paganism. For, if you once admit, “Not only God but I also,” and if your heart is with the latter — and friends, that’s where you have it! — there is no stopping it. Let me assure you that there are many sincere and very lovely people among the German Christians. But it did not save them falling prey to this error.

Let me warn you now. If you make a start with “God and…” you are opening the doors to every demon….

In Germany we have learned by experience that the one thing that offered a chance to face the real enemy and refuse his claim was the simple message: God is the only Helper! It was the simple Either-Or which was refused a while ago. Learn in time what may here be learned. You are still soldiers in the barracks. Real firing has not yet begun for you. Some day you may be called to the front line. Perhaps there you will remember our discussion. You may then gain a better understanding of what you do not seem to be able to grasp today. One-sidedness will be your only chance.

Later they “affirmed to the last that if they had been deceived, the Lord himself was their deceiver.” Let the reader understand.

In his great essay “Literature as Equipment for Living,” Kenneth Burke argues that proverbs may be described as a kind of purposeful realism (my phrase, not his):

Here there is no “realism for its own sake.” There is realism for promise, admonition, solace, vengeance, foretelling, instruction, charting, all for the direct bearing that such acts have upon matters of welfare.

Then Burke suggests: What happens if we think of all literature that way? “Proverbs are strategies for dealing with situations” – maybe all works of literary art do the same, just in different and more complex ways. If so, you need sociological categories for thinking about literature:

What would such sociological categories be like? They would consider works of art, I think, as strategies for selecting enemies and allies, for socializing losses, for warding off evil eye, for purification, propitiation, and desanctification, consolation and vengeance, admonition and exhortation, implicit commands or instructions of one sort or another. Art forms like “tragedy” or “comedy” or “satire” would be treated as equipment for living, that size up situations in various ways and in keeping with correspondingly various attitudes. The typical ingredients of such forms would be sought. Their relation to typical situations would be stressed. Their comparative values would be considered, with the intention of formulating a “strategy of strategies,” the “over-all” strategy obtained by inspection of the lot.

What Burke calls “the ‘over-all’ strategy” might be a synonym for the “general theory” I described, with reservations, in a recent post. But let’s set that aside for now, and think about equipment.

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes,

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

This is an astonishingly rich passage, but let’s begin exploring it by looking at one phrase: “to equip the saints.” The relevant word there, katartismon (καταρτισμὸν), appears in this one biblical location only, but it’s related to a whole complex of words that are dispersed throughout the letters of the New Testament. You’ll probably recognize the two parts: kat (down) and artisimon (shaped, formed, adjusted). The meaning is “adjusted just so” or “shaped just right” – which is why you sometimes see it translated “perfected,” though I don’t prefer that meaning. Throughout ancient Greek you see versions of this concept:

• ἐναραρίσκω (to fit or fasten in, to be fitted in)
• ἐπαραρίσκω (to fit to or upon, fasten to, to fit tight or exactly)
• προσαραρίσκω (to fit to, to be fitted to, firmly fitted)
• συναραρίσκω (to join together, to hang together)

The core idea is that of good workmanship, of something well-crafted. Closely related (thematically though not etymologically) is a passage from earlier in the letter to the Ephesians in which Paul says that we are the craftwork of God – esmen poiēma ktisthentes en Christō lēsou epi ergois agathois – poems made in Christ Jesus for good works.

The particular craft that seems to be contextually lurking behind all these terms is carpentry, and more specifically joinery – making the joints snug and tight and the surfaces smooth, so that the work thus crafted will hold together when it’s stressed or buffeted. That said, in the long passage quoted above Paul moves easily from the image of a well-made case to the image of a well-knitted body – because a body, being organic, will be not just soundly made but also capable of increasingly varied and challenging actions. A healthy body is more capable and adaptable than a well-crafted case because it can grow in size and strength, and improve in dexterity. (A body as old and decrepit as mine can still learn a new trick or two; even now I can through exercise increase not just my muscular power but even the density and strength of my bones.)

Still, it’s impossible not to remember that the art or craft in which the young Jesus was trained was that of a builder, a tekton.

To be equipped, then, in Paul’s sense, is not a matter of “the things we carry” but rather the formation we have undergone. (The German word Bildung doesn’t refer to building, rather to imaging — Bild means image — but the correspondence of the two words is a lovely accident.) Christian formation is equipment not in the sense of having the right tools but rather of being properly built, which means, chiefly, having the right habits – but no: the right habitus. The whole panoply of customary actions and perceptions located in one’s body, and one’s mind, and one’s social surround. (My brothers and sisters in Christ are part of my habitus.)

To return to Kenneth Burke: What if we were to think of literature and the other arts as a kind of repository of habitus, a motley collection of practices and strategies? “Motley” because we can never adopt them simply and straightforwardly – we have to accept the inevitability of bricolage. But still: experiences not just to admire or appreciate but to use. Edward Mendelson’s idea of “literature as a special form of intimacy” seems relevant here – literature, and the other arts, as equipment for living, equipment shared by fallen mortals, thinking reeds, puzzled people in the process of being formed. An improvised sociology for wayfarers.

In Ozu’s late film Good Morning, the primary engine of conflict, which is also to say the primary engine of story, is the desire of two boys for a television. They have been forbidden to watch sumo wrestling, their great passion, in the house of some neighbors because said neighbors are thought to be overly Western and (ergo) morally unreliable. So the children demand that their parents buy them their own TV. (One common theme in Ozu’s films is the disobedience of children and a resulting annoyance in parents which rarely leads to any real discipline.) When the children persist in complaining about the lack of a television, their father tells them to shut up. He says they yammer on. But the children, reasonably enough, reply that it is the parents who yammer on, that it is in fact characteristic of adulthood to persist hour after hour in meaningless verbiage. Good morning, good evening, how are you, isn’t it a nice day, lovely weather we’re having, and so on ad nauseam. (The younger boy’s way of picking up on this adult habit is fun: When leaving someone’s house he chirps, in English, “I love you!”) In order to make their point, they decide to go on a language strike: they refuse to speak until they get their television.

On the morning after their speech fast begins, the younger of the two boys on his way to school passes a neighbor lady, who greets him warmly – but, committed to his discipline, he ignores her and continues walking. Because she had recently had a minor conflict with their mother, she becomes convinced that the boy’s parents have said things about her that leads the children to shun her. Thus a trivial disagreement intensifies and spreads through the little neighborhood.

Two things about all this are worth noting. The first is that the movie is set in a suburb of Tokyo in which people live in very close proximity to one another, but with a domestic architecture that largely imitates that of traditional Japanese houses. Which is to say that people are going in and out of one another’s homes constantly, often sliding open doors without knocking, and in so doing opening the viewer’s world to people sitting in a house on the other side of the narrow walkway that separates one domicile from another. The fact that people live in such close proximity puts them in one another’s lives on a constant basis; but the fact that there are indeed doors separating one house from another means that they often do not know precisely what is going on in their neighbors’ houses and are led to make unwarranted assumptions. Maybe we could see this as a kind of anticipatory comment on social media: See Ian Bogost’s essay “People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much.”

The second point is this: there’s a lot of farting in this movie. All of the local boys play a game in which one presses another’s forehead, at which point the other is expected to generate a responding fart. “You’re no good,” says one boy to another who is unable to fart on command. (He tries so hard that he soils himself; his mother is frustrated at having to replace his underwear.) In another scene, a man dressing before work keeps farting, and in response to each fart his wife leans into the doorway to inquire what he needs.

The obvious implication of these two points – the boys’ perception of the chattering of adults and the persistence of farting – is that much human communication is actually non-substantive, non-informational – phatic is the term of art. Good Morning is a very funny but also a profound exposure of our need for communication, and the ways that communication can become miscommunication. The impulse to connect is, alas, a primary source of conflict — something Mark Zuckerberg will never really understand. Good Morning is a classic, one of Ozu’s few neglected masterpieces.