Searching for God # 124

 Sometimes we octogenarians simply have to let loose! We see things through the lenses of very old eyes. We think about things with very old minds while obviously risking the charge of nostalgia, out-of-date, past our overdue date, and simply dotty, as in drowning in our dotage, we think, or perhaps even are convinced, that we have to speak out. 

Today I will foolishly attempt to link theology (the Christian brand) with both the Western culture and what we consider to be the normal way to operate in any group or organization. It is not to say, or even to suggest that any ‘perceived correlation’ has been deliberate, willful or even malignant. What it is to argue is that it may very be our shared blindness, unconsciousness, denial, avoidance, or more significantly, our shared compliance with the norms that we have been given that implicates Christian theology with a self-sabotaging modus operandi that has implications for every single facet of our shared culture, society, and what Hillman calls our anima mundi. 

At its core this perspective wrestles with the tension between, on one hand, 

‘stability/security/predictability/social compliance/tradition/authority/the sacred’  

and on the other hand 

‘change, evolution, imagination, intuition, spontaneity, innovation, revision, flow, instability, vision, rebelliousness and the sacred.’ 

Of course, these two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, nor are they necessarily antithetical to each other. Indeed, we live in the ‘energy’ of the between. 

These thoughts are premised on the perception, albeit an arguable one, that we collectively, individually, personally and organizationally, ‘tilt’ to the power and authority side of the continuum. What that tilt means has implications for and inferences with concepts like ‘tipping points,’ and tectonic shifts in perception/belief/practice, the capacity of each of us, alone and together to adapt to a different perspective and even more serious, the interjection of any changes that have emerged from a change in perspective. Briefly, that means that what we start with, in any situation, is what others have started with in a similar situation. Our individual perception, attitude, approach and even our confidence are all linked to the familiarity of convention. 

And while we are young children learning to avoid getting burned by touching a hot stove, or learning the risk of not paying attention to passing cars, simply for our own safety, as well as for the ‘reputation’ of our parents and guardians, need to learn, practice and comply. Similarly, in spelling, grammar, scientific method, learning a musical instrument, how to paint a picture, physical exercise and team sports, we have learned that there are ‘ground rules’ for exploring each discipline. And, it says here, there is mounting evidence that what are considered interruptive questions from young children are resolutely being repressed by the current crop of teachers.  

That social symptom, however, is also a pattern of a social, cultural, religious and managerial/organizational pathology. We are all operating within ‘systems’ or cultures, organizational expectations, norms, conventions, premises and even philosophies that have shaped the ‘breathing, working, conversing, community-building, and alleged cohesive, order-generating modus operandi.’ While biologically we all breath the same air, drink the same water and feed ourselves from the same land and oceans, we also have inherited norms, expectations, conventions and even subtle, if often unstated, directives.  

It is the source and nature of some of these directives that, it can be and is being argued, have Christian roots. Let’s start with the Christian expectation, based on an inheritance presumed to be from the life of Jesus, that humility is not only becoming for those who seek to become Christian and especially for those who are already practicing Christians. Blended into a cultural convention expressed thusly: little children/people are to be seen and not heard, is a strict directive of manners in a Christian society. No doubt, some of the resistance of teachers to questions from curious, imaginative and interrupting students can be traced back to ‘the teaching of manners’ to the young child. Subtle, and ever so demoralizing to the student whose mind may have stumbled onto that ‘what or why or how’...the teacher may have maintained strict classroom management, and sacrificed the opportunity to explore the cutting edges of the lesson’s topic. Even more importantly, by resisting and dismissing the question, and with it, the student who asked it, the teacher is sending a very silent, almost subversive message to those students: interrupting questions are not going to be tolerated. Little if any research has, or unfortunately will likely be conducted, on the emotional, cognitive, social, psychological aspects of the kids in such a classroom. Nor will the teacher likely be cautioned, and certainly not sanctioned, for what amounts to professional negligence. After all, we do not prosecute or even notice behaviour that comports with ‘classroom management;’ there is nothing to investigate if there is no acting out, rebelliousness, among the students. As long as ‘things remain quiet, the authority of such professional insensitivity is unlikely to be either noticed or questioned. 

Authority, control, good management practices, setting and keeping boundaries, covering the curriculum for the examination, calm and dispassionate discipline only when absolutely necessary....these are guidelines that apply to millions of classrooms in education systems across the North American continent. 

A similar pattern can be seen in Christian education classes, taught mostly by those who have already ‘bought in’ to the traditional, conventional.... miraculous Birth of Jesus, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Forgiveness by grace and the application/implication of each young person’s aspiration of his/her own ‘born again’ transformation. A simple question that might be skeptical of the miraculous birth, or another inquiring into what it means to be resurrected would likely send the teacher into an apoplectic moment. Tradition, a culture in which whispering eclipses normal conversation, the very subject matter of theology, the very building into which one enters for whatever ‘religious’ experience might be expected or not....all of these things contribute to an aura and an ethos of ‘authority’ which is obviously not to be questioned. Of course, in adult classes on scripture, theology and culture,  such questions would not only have a legitimate place but would warrant respectful consideration. 

The proverbial ‘where do babies come from?’ question from a five-year-old, in a family with siblings might very well pique the ears and curiousity of those siblings while it wil challenge the parent to chose the appropriate words to respond. The question, however, is an example of both humour and the spontaneity that can and never will be completely eradicated from young children, even given the most ardent motivation to erase it among some adults. Thomas Homer-Dixon once wrote a book, entitled, The Ingenuity Gap, from which Macleans magazine posits the question: ‘is our world becoming too complex, too fast-paced to manage?’...Homer-Dixon writes: 

Human beings have been smart enough to turn nature to their minds, generate vast wealth for thermselves, and double their average life span. But are they smart enough to solve the problems of the 21st century? (From a review of the book on AI) 

Homer-Dixon's book was considered one of the most thoughtful books of the times by E.O. Wilson, himself the author of  Consilience: The Unity of Thought. In it Wilson ‘renews the Enlightenment’s search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences adn the humanities....The Term consilience was coined by the nineteenth century Britiah philosopher and scientist William Whewell, as part of the phrase ‘the consilience of inductions.’ According to Whewell, the concilinece of unductions takes place when na ninduction obtained from one class of facts coincides with an induction obtained from a different class. (from Issues in Science and technology, issues.org) 

From our perspective, the question is not one of inductions of complementary or even identical facts induced from one discipline to another. Rather, any unity that we might pursue between and among disciplines issues from the application of the entity we call homo sapiens, homo religiosus, curiosus homo into each and every situation. We seek, here, neither ingenuity nor consilience, nor unity of thought. Indeed, it is to some critical degree that we oppose the pursuit of such unities, as an intellectual, cognitive, empirical and literal distraction from, if not outright obliteration of, the unity that humans bring to each and every situation. 

Nor are we nor can we rely on education systems, or even the church, exclusively, to bear the burden of the reductionisms, the minimalisms, and the collective neuroses in which we all, individually and collectively live our lives.  

In our workplaces and our institutions (also workplaces), the operating modus operandi continues to be based on the need for order, control, efficiency, and what the leadership and management texts term effectiveness. Initiating energies, those suggestion boxes, and those impertinent outbursts in formal meetings where the frustration of one or more colleagues with the suffocation of creativity, spontaneity, imagination, and pattern-perceptions for which no single individual can even expect to hold exclusive title, taken together, exceed ingenuity, exceed any so-called unity of thought, exceed the limits and boundaries of departmental divisions of labour. 

Nevertheless, such impertinent, interruptive, authority-challenging impulses bounce around in the minds of every single employee, employer, professor, mechanic, fork-lift driver and foot-care-clinician. When, for example, a columnist in the Globe and Mail, Andrew Coyne, writes an incisive piece about how doing either/or both diplomacy and/or defiance by Prime Minister Carney and the Canadian government in the face of the impulses of the petulant child in the Oval Office has/have proven worthless, and both lead to what Coyne calls ‘zero’’’his word for ‘do whatever Canada wants,’ we have to wonder if the PMO, inhabited by PhD’s, has been caught in the web of two polar, conventional, structurally familiar, traditional and normative options. 

Similarly, when listening to the stories of hard-working labourers, in whatever field of industry, health care, commerce especially retail, or corporation, one hears highly similar stories of men and women caught in job descriptions that define (and limit) their imaginations, intuition and even altruism to make the ‘place’ work more effectively (however their picture of that might take shape). Their specific performance is being ‘monitored, evaluated, sanctioned and/or rewarded dependent on a strict set of guidelines that are based on some fundamental principles. 

No only humility, and fitting in without questioning authority, are two of those principles. So to are safety guidelines that can and do pit one generation against a new younger, eager and albeit naive generation. Tradition (and seniority), both considered sacred, not merely eclipse innovation experimentation, colaboration.....all of that stuff is left to the ‘research labs’ and the feedback from the sales and marketing departments who are exposed to the public ‘trends.’ Tradition and seniority obliterate innovation, intuition, openness and imagination of  the lowest man or woman on the totempole. Increasingly too, those men and women are not ‘organized’ given the evisceration of the labour movement and the galloping enhancement of ‘power and authority’of the owners and executives of all major institutions. Is this reflective of the ecclesial model of a Pope, the inerrant, most spiritual, most revered and most dominant figure in the Roman Catholic church? 

That question will sound to many as an ‘anti-Catholic’ bigoted question. It is no more directed to the Roman Catholic church than it is to the pervasive influence of the military and the quasi-military mind-set, organizational premises and operating manuals of every organization. Dominant, protected from appeal to decisions taken, convicted their need to meet the specific goals of the organization, increased efficiency, decreased operating costs, reduced dependence on human labour, increased reliance on technology and especially Artificial Intelligence, and the social, cultural, dismissal of long-term impacts of decisions. Instant gratification is not exclusive to the purchase of a McDonald’s Big Mac; it is also endemic to the pharmaceutical, therapeutic, and medical fraternities. It is endemic to the pursuit of favourable headlines by government spokespersons on behalf of their bosses. It is endemic to the practice of the legal establishment, given that the courts, especially in the United States, are flooded with multiple tsunamis of both civil and criminal cases. 

And, for now, let’s close with the religious, Christian, theological principles of ‘law, punishment and judgement’ as having both seeded our cultural, perceptual and epistemological ‘garden’ to the point where it is overgrowing with the ‘weeds’ that such seeding has generated. 

And who is going to be able and willing to question such a ‘traditional, precedent-based, legally defined, constitutionally endorsed, and politically worshipped ‘cover’ for those charged with responsibiltiy for enhancing, growing and ‘weeding’ the culture of its insidious, life-defying, spirit-destroying and religiously blind toxins? 

Certainly not the clerical class of the ecclesia!