I started reading “All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age,” by philosophy professors Herbert Dreyfus (Berkeley) and Sean Dorrance Kelly (Harvard). At the end of the second chapter, after using authors David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert to illustrate contrasting views on how meaning is generated or attributed in our daily lives, they end with the following paragraph:
“The question that remains is whether Gilbert and Wallace between them have completely covered the terrain. In Wallace’s Nietschean view, we are the sole active agents in the universe, responsible for generating out of nothing whatever notion of the sacred and divine there can ever be. Gilbert, by contrast, takes a kind of mature Lutheran view. On her account we are purely passive recipients of God’s divine will, nothing but receptacles for the grace he may choose to offer. Is there anything in between? We think there is, and we will try to develop it in the final chapter of the book.” (p. 57)
Needless to say, I skipped to the final chapter.
In that chapter they suggest there is present, today, in our culture, opportunities to generate a kind of experience where, we neither need to impose meaning on our world, nor passively await for meaning to descend upon our lives.
They start by suggesting that there are often collective experiences of marvel, bliss, exhultation. Experiences like those where expectators attending a live sporting event witness an athlete “in the zone” and are collectively taken by the experience. Or when, also collectively, we rejoice in a skilled orator’s speech. They equate these experiences with moments of realization of Homer’s notion of physis: how the world is in as much as it presents itself to us. They also suggest the exhultation of these collective experiences come and go as a wave. They use the term “whoosh” to describe it.
They then recognize the dangers of “whooshing,” like when the collective experience is dominated by some type of mass mentality and pack behavior, and where rational self-control is obliterated.
But they claim there is another type of experience available to us, which also offers an opportunity for experiencing meaning in our physical connection to the world, and which, in addition, can be used to discern between “good” and “bad” whooshing. They equate that experience with the Aristotelian term: poiesis. Poiesis captures a craftsman’s like practice of developing an intimate understanding and relationship with some aspect of our world. A relationship characterized by a “feedback loop between craftsman and craft” (p.211) and through which meaning also arises.
But “poiesis” too has its limitations, in that, in our world, it is under attack by technology. Technology that reduced our need to deeply understand our world to reach our goals. An example they give is that of GPS, through which we can move from one place to another, simply by following orders, and with never building significant knowledge of our surroundings.
The authors then argue that it is up to us to discover, in what we already care about, the opportunities for poiesis. Whether it is in drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, enjoying a walk, or the company of a friend. In other words, discovering it in our relationship to the world, and then nurturing it, transforming routine into ritual. They argue that is the realm of the sacred that exists currently in our world: a rich polytheistic world where the sacred manifests itself through physis and poiesis, and where technology has its place, without completely erasing the opportunities for the sacred.
I am very much enjoying the book, and intend to read the chapters in between (really…at some point), but here are a few thoughts based on the three chapters I read already:
- In trying to describe how we can discover what we care about and build rituals around routines to nourish our experience of being in this world through poiesis, they use the example of having coffee each morning. They suggest asking what we like about this routine, whether it is the warmth of the coffee, the striking black color, the aroma. That is, they appeal to the senses. This appeal to the senses is very similar to how I have learned to practice mindfulness, to be present in this world, based on my understanding of the practice and the teachings of Thich Naht Hahn. Other parallels to eastern ways of thinking could be made when discussing Wallace’s “This is Water” commencement speech in chapter two. Yet, the authors do not seem to be interested in discussing these potential parallels, at least not in the parts I have read.
- In discussing Wallace’s nihilism, they propose that, to the extent that he can see any space for the sacred, his attempt to reach it is by imposing meaning on experience, creating this meaning out of nothing, and constantly doing so. There are no constraints on the meaning Wallace can impose on his experience. They suggest this self-imposed task is not humanly possible. In fact, they state that “in such a world, as Melville understood, grim perseverance is possible for a while; but in the end suicide is the only choice” (p.50). I a) do not see how or why “suicide is the only choice,” and b) find this statement actually in bad taste, to say the least, since Wallace did commit suicide. His example is rather an unfairly picked choice, unnecessarily making use of someone’s suicide to make their argument.
- The authors describe Wallace and Gilbert as having a similar view of the purpose of writing: translating life, conveying what it means to be human, becoming less alone. If the interpretation of our world and our condition is actually an intrinsic and inseparable part of our human condition, one could argue that storytelling is not just interpreting what it means to be human, but actually contributing to creating that condition. Storytelling would then be a way of creating rather than just interpreting our world. I have for a while found this way of thinking appealing, and it is different from what the authors claim to be the views of Wallace and Gilbert. It is perhaps more in tune with Mario Vargas Llosa’s story in his book “El Hablador.” Perhaps something I will explore further in the future.
Reference:
Dreyfus, Hubert and Sean Dorrance Kelly. 2011. All Things Shining. Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. New York: Free Press.