volare

There is something so beautiful about rain falling. It is after 4 in the morning and the only reason I am up is to listen to the rain. It's too precious to miss. Poina'ole makamae.

There were a few things that happened today - well, rather, yesterday to be correct - that put me into a Shostakovich mood. Now when I say that, "Shostakovich" mood, many things could come to mind for many different people. I admit that the content of the mood isn't so easily discernable by its label. At any rate, I felt like jazz today. His jazz suites are amazing. It is too bad that a certain dutch violinist has turned the waltz from one of his jazz suites into a faux-classical pop nightmare. I have no problem with the average musical ignoramus enjoying Shostakovich. Rather, I have a problem with dumbing down the utter emotional impact of such a composer.

A recurring theme has been my relationships with people, especially over these past two weeks. Here I am speaking about nobody in particular, much less those that I have recently seen in Berkeley. I am talking about friends who have decided to keep up with me through some auxilary means. Some of them see me as a close friend, others are comfortable with me occupying a specific niche in their own scheme of things. Not that they're mutually exclusive or anything. It is always interesting to see how people delinate their relationships. It is often telling of their own maturity as a person and how they see the world. There is no value judgment going on here. One's own experience has led them to recognize patterns and recurring structures of sociality because something strikes a deep resonance in them. For some, this is the desire for order out of chaos manifested in clearly defined social roles. Others who bask in the elan of the moment dispense with those lines entirely. Relationships may be understood as esteem indicators that are colored by both the disposition of the subject and the content of the "other". Whether or not that content is known through perception or through empirical fact...I don't know.

What is fascinating about this process is not so much the fact that people do it. We all do. The interesting question is rather the why, as I have alluded to above. Where does "worldview" end and "world-viewed" begin? Can we distinguish between the world as it is, or are things forever mediated through prejudice and bias? And if the latter, is there ever such a thing as the just and righteous ordering of these prejudices and biases? If such is the case I will argue yes, there is such a thing as an ordering of prejudice and bias. Society at the moment seems to ascribe to these ordering of prejudices the word "experience". I wonder if that is necessarily so. Gosh, I wish Gershwin were around at times like this. Get it? badumpchhhhh

It seems at once our relations to the other are caught in this tension. Perception and observation, prejudice and evidence. But the problem still remains: are our friendships to remain ancillary to our own agenda, subject to be stretched, manipulated, or otherwise distorted so that they become unrecognizable in themselves, just to fit a hole in our lives without an apparent corresponding piece? Are we to assume that friendships and relationships are naturally plastic to such an extent as to render them so subjectively changable? In other words and in short, is it ever possible to love people as they are versus what they do for our concept of self-relating-to-other? I for one believe that it is possible to love another as they are in themselves. No doubt about it. But what would that look like?

First, I would dispell any notions that such an enterprise would require a brute empiricism, as it were. Often things appear very different than they are. The same goes for people. I am not talking about a superficial analysis of another's mood or facial expression. I am talking about confusing what is really essential to any given person and what is secondary. Put Thomistically: the categories of first and second principles no longer distinguished. For to see and sense is another thing than to understand. I may sense and see many things yet fail to come to a basic apprehension of that which I have experienced.

What would we rely upon? Intuition? It appears that this is a first recourse against empiricism. But consider the fact that pure intuition does not exist. We, as subsistent creatures suspended in a centerless web of impersonal contingency, do not come to pure intuition on account of the simple fact that it is beyond human capacity to disconnect oneself from discreet sensations. Intuition, therefore, is but a repackaging of deep seated psychological inclinations or dispositions to which we have not given a label. Intuition therefore is a phenomenon which is to be described, not defined. Hence, our experiences which proceed forth from intuition should also be described and not defined. In essense intuition seems to elude definition in the first place. And thus, intuition offers little in terms of concrete actions and emotions as guides.

But what is the moral value of the senses? Thomas Aquinas tells us that "Nothing has come to the intellect that was not in the senses first." Beautiful. In that statement Thomas hints at the human condition: a center of consciousness operating in one undergirding reality of the world. This is not a turn to the subject. Rather, this is a subjectivism of a different sort. By taking the person as a locus of reflection, we affirm that the world is indeed intelligible, but only to those specific beings with the potencies to reflect as such. In a word, humanity. It is our capacities as person that allows us to carefully discern what is, what is not, what should be, what ought to be, and what cannot be so. This process of discernment is obviously not an absolute. If it were, my own desires would be satisfied at the moment of conception. As a finite being, I am not entitled to that immediacy. As a Christian, I reserve that for the one single Being whose thought and act are convergent. And, owing to belief in that being, I know that I have been given a rationality which mirrors, although highly imperfectly and only in analogy, that source of all life and reality. In such this way, we maintain the courage to discern ever more fully in light of our own weakness and intrinsic giftedness.

But what does this imply for our relationships? Everything. Consider the soverignty of God. God, the first principle, the beginning and the end, the only pure being in existence. Such a God has given a bit of itself out of an act of love. Yes, love. This love which has been extended to us has empowered us with the ability to see others not only as a co-participator in the act of knowing creation, but to do so in its own integrity without assimilation. The result? Intedepdence which is always preceeded by interdependence.

I will write on this later. It's late and I should get to bed. The ultimate answer is, of course, a disinterested love. A love which loves for love's sake, over and against assumptions and desires. In taming our own desires to beloved, we no longer constrain the intrinsic freedom of others as a soverign in themselves. We do not thrust upon them our own conceptions of who they are to be and what we need them to be for us. Conversely, it is possible to be loved without having to "do" things for others. What, and more importantly how, we "be" is what is value. At times like these, it is not remiss to emphasize the fact that merely being fully present, open to the moment, is one of the greatest acts of love we can bestow upon each other.

...to be continued.