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𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗴 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

 

 

I find it helpful to conceive of significant artists and thinkers, visionaries and moralists, as more or less comprehensive focalizations of cultural material organized in a distinct way. I know this is not a unique or particularly original way of approaching things, but what I like about it is the emphasis it places on the artful management of available materials by highly motivated minds and creative spirits. The impressive thinker or poet is dropped, as it were, into a conversation that has been going on for millennia. Most persons – the vast majority at all times throughout human history – simply take in and obediently conform to the words of one or a small handful of participants in the ongoing conversation. Thus, one becomes a follower and carrier of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, the Koran, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Jordan Peterson, or Donald Trump.

 

But with a select minority, a different opportunity presents itself. For one reason or another, members of this group of exceptions cannot, with a good conscience, simply and wholeheartedly follow or obey or imitate even the loudest and most impressive spokesmen for a particular form of human life. This is not to say that this minority of exceptional, creative persons do not find a great deal to admire in the principal voices in the “Big Conversation.” Quite the contrary! But because they are so powerfully impressed by the conversational character of the origins and complex development of cultures, they cannot, in good conscience, surrender their minds and wills to any single voice, no matter how persuasive or congenial to their own “nature” that voice happens to be. Such surrender would be to ignore the complexity and the dynamism of actual human life. Nevertheless, the newcomer to the “Big Conversation” is faced with a daunting dilemma. While he is preternaturally fascinated and inspired by the conversational character of culture, as such, as a newcomer he can only have a general or superficial understanding of what the major voices in the conversation are saying, at least initially. And, as often as not, it is more like a civilized dispute or respectful disagreement than a harmonious colloquium. The newcomer feels pressure, oftentimes, to pick a side – usually one that agrees with his temperament and natural preferences – but this temptation is inwardly resisted by his deeper desire to embrace the conversation as a whole.

 

At some point, the exceptional, creative spirit realizes that unless and until he earns a deep or thorough understanding of each of the major speakers in the Big Conversation, his aim of entering into the conversation will be thwarted by his own ignorance and lack of (spiritual) determination. The prospect of achieving only a superficial or general grasp of the principal voices is unacceptable to him precisely because such generality and superficiality will not only bar his entrance into the conversation, but deprive his life of the quality and substance he is committed to finding. He notices that some of the monocled cyclops that follow one of the commanding voices in the Big Conversation have succeeded in establishing personal careers of notable quality and substance. If such lives lack the comprehensiveness promised by an adequate grasp of the colloquy’s multi-perspectival character, they are nonetheless imbued with a kind and degree of richness denied to more superficial followers, as well as to wannabe participants in the Big Conversation who have not yet been torn open by the terrible, torturous tensions of that Conversation.

 

This experience of being torn open would appear to be the rite of passage or initiation ordeal that qualifies the exceptional candidate for entrance into the Conversation. But what, more specifically, is being torn open – or apart? What does this destructive act enable? Is this primarily or essentially an intellectual process of transformation? Is it an event or transformation that occurs within the admittedly limited horizons of human reason, or does it occur beyond that insulating membrane or wall? Are reason and intellect, themselves, put “on trial” (Oedipus Rex, Hamlet) as the candidate approaches the threshold – the decisive line that must be crossed before he can take a seat at the roundtable and make a noteworthy contribution to the Conversation?

 

If humans are ultimately not simple, but complex creatures composed of related but not naturally harmonious elements, components, levels, or capacities, then what? If we approach the human as a plurality of multifarious ingredients – divergent or rivaling pulls – and not as a simple unity to which these various factors can be forcefully reduced, what then?

 

For the sake of coherence or some kind of consistency in one’s thought and behavior, wouldn’t most persons be inclined to latch onto one – or maybe two – of the elements of this plurality and build (their personality) from there? The alternative appears to be consigning oneself to an unstable condition of bouncing back and forth between these various, constituent parts of our given nature – say, between rational calculation, compassionate feeling, erotic urges, speculative intuition, conventional commonsense, sensory immersion?

 

Here I am pointing out a kind of symmetry or analogue between what I was referring to earlier as the Great Conversation and the array of internal elements and capacities of the human as such. Is this a macrocosm-microcosm sort of relationship?

 

While it was almost assuredly an impossible task or goal that he set before himself with the Ethics, Spinoza’s valiant and audacious attempt to devise, establish, and give expressive form to an all-encompassing “theory of everything” commands the respect of anyone who has a philosophical bone in his “mind-body.” The very existence of the Ethics is an enduring testament to the philosophical drive (or daimonic compulsion) to glimpse the (ever-present but elusive) whole through the partial slit of the imperfect human intellect. While this capacity or seed – for wonder and for investigation into the so-called “permanent questions” – may be a standard issue component of the human mind, the actual drive or passionate quest for philosophical understanding and insight is active only in a slender minority. Perhaps the same may be said of man’s capacity or potential for deep, transformative religious experience. We could add art and literature, moral-political wisdom, scientific-technological inventiveness, and other arenas of cultural importance to the list.

 

My aim in drawing attention to these differences between revered and authoritative contributors to the Big Conversation (that is culture) and the far more numerous followers who make up the rank-and-file of ordinary humanity is not to promote or justify some kind of elitist scheme or hierarchy wherein the many exist and work only for the sake of the exceptional few at the top. Nietzsche seems to have thought along these lines, as have certain other advocates of cultural-political aristocracy or elitism.

 

On the other hand, I find that I am guardedly but genuinely sympathetic with those critics who cry out against the general leveling and debasement of cultural, moral, educational, aesthetic, and other standards as a result of the “revolt of the masses” – the inevitable lowering of these once high standards as a consequence of the democratizing, dispersive tendencies that have prevailed since the Industrial Revolution.

 

There are elite interests that have emerged in response to this leveling and vulgarization of life and culture – this soul-threatening specialization and standardization in the various departments of modern life – but perhaps only a small portion of these are Nietzschean-style “cultural” elites. Most of them are political-economic elites who simply want to exploit, propagandize, and marginalize the masses. It’s all about power and dominance – through wealth, access to information, and status symbols. This is a very different kettle of fish than the cultural power that accrues to that exceptional minority of individuals who, through strenuous efforts and earnest determination, have won a voice in the Big Conversation.

 

Earlier I spoke of the decisive ordeal of being torn apart as a kind of initiation into the roundtable conversation that is synonymous with the state of culture at any given time or place. There are few experiences that are simultaneously as humbling and ennobling as being torn apart by the torturous tensions produced by the collision of the authentic, articulate voices of the Great Conversation. The deepening and expansion of one’s humanity that can occur in the wake of this crisis of being torn apart by the paradoxes and unresolvable, permanent questions undermines and makes laughable the presumed authority of aforementioned “power elites.” Any traces of “us versus them” modes of thinking and feeling are dissolved as the candidate is inducted into the circle of elder brothers and sisters of humanity.

 

The human species is henceforth seen and felt to be a family – a family, moreover that can only become dysfunctional or internally split when it is ruled by opportunistic power-addicts and not by elder siblings who are chiefly concerned with the well-being of the entire, extended family. But such a change lies in the distant future for us, it would seem. As a species, we have scarcely begun to anticipate the suffering that the blind hubris and warped priorities of the past few generations are setting into motion. The innocent and the betrayed, as usual, will pay most for our insane excesses. Alas, this seems to be the only way to educate intemperate beasts who are too clever for their own good. I take no pleasure in hinting at these terrifying matters awaiting us and our children, and I hasten to add that I am not coming from a religious viewpoint, but from a naturalistic, ‘cause and effect’ perspective. I hope I am wrong, but the idea that we might escape any accountability for our wrong actions seems difficult to sustain. 

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