Section V.5A of II.1 (“The Problem of Scale (Part 1)”)
Considering Cores Versus Systems
Ivan Illich was a great man, but he is relatively unknown and certainly not well-studied. I have referred to Nietzsche as a “Core Thinker of Critiquing Bestow Centrism,” and I think we might say that Illich was also a “Core Thinking of an Apocalypse of Nonrationality for the Art of Living.” I unfortunately think there might be an academic bias against “Core Thinkers” in favor of those who are perceived to be “Systematic Thinkers” (which I think has contributed to us missing many of the Counter-Enlightenment and Modern Counter-Enlightenment thinkers), which is to say we favor philosophers who we perceive as building systems upon large ideas or axioms like “Being” or “Absurdism,” perhaps because they are easier to paraphrase and teach to larger groups of people (which is considered a standard of success by many systems), and if we do teach Core Thinkers, we have likely found a way to think them through a category, concept, or summary (arrived at “top-down” versus “bottom-up,” omitting too much). A “core” of Nietzsche and Illich though is never explicitly stated (perhaps more so intuited), perhaps because Core Thinkers may hesitate to defend an overarching theme in fear that it might bias their observations. They also aren’t so much looking to “make a point,” but to instead describe what they see (like Martin Buber depicting himself as someone who stood at a window and pointed), but for me the very fact they do this and a pattern emerges is all the more reason to believe this pattern is substantive versus self-imposed. Although “the overarching theme” of Core Thinkers can be harder to grasp and is usually only implicit, the likelihood of its validity I think is higher, precisely because it has been observed so widely and through so much variance.
Core Thinkers tend to observe many fields closely (an interdisciplinary and generalist approach that systems might also be biased against), and with their gaze describe and seek to understand what they see. Flannery O’Connor once said a great writer isn’t afraid to stare, and Core Thinkers are like writers in that they look closely at what “unfolds” before them. As a writer who wants to be sure a certain message or meaning comes across in his or her story can risk turning the work into propaganda, so the philosopher who wants to assure a certain idea or notion comes through can risk forcing the world to conform to his or her thinking versus the other way around. Philosophers like Nietzsche and Illich don’t worry about this (as don’t great writers), and they are instead just focused on what they see (as great writers are just focused on telling a story). They actually probably don’t even intend to be “Core Thinkers,” but instead that is simply the emergent result of their faith and trust in doing the work of observation and phenomenology. As a good writer has ideas and intentions but ultimately trusts the interpretation of the reader (and so doesn’t make things overly-explicit), so a great philosopher and phenomenologist can ultimately leave it up to others to see and excavate what is implicit in their work — that is if there is something to excavate and if people see it.
As a great writer runs the risk of focusing on a story and missing an overarching meaning, so a great philosopher must run the risk of focusing on careful observations and insights that ultimately don’t all connect. Both must face fear; both must have faith in the substance of their work and not try to assure (perhaps from a place of worry) that substance is present. This “anxiety for depth” of a writer according to Flannery O’Connor often came through in the construction of symbols — one recalls her telling a student that the significance of the Misfit’s hat in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” was ‘to cover his head,’ creating the impression that O’Connor ‘didn’t know what she was doing.’⁶⁸⁹ O’Connor viewed symbols as counterfeits of sacraments, noting that ‘[t]he ancient Hebrew genius [was] for making the absolute concrete,’ which is to say the Absolute was understood as in a rock versus a rock be made into a symbol for an Absolute.⁶⁹⁰ O’Connor saw all of reality as sacramental, and so if she just successfully described a real rock, she would successfully describe the Absolute; ironically, if she tried to make a rock into a symbol for the Absolute, the rock would point at nothing (suggesting that an effort to make the universe meaningful could make it nihilistic, versus just let the universe be meaningful). Her job was to be like the painter Cezanne, deeply observing the world around her so that she could describe what was there and so describe the Absolute, not as an empiricist but more like a phenomenologist.
As the best writers don’t try to make symbols but instead trust they are describing and honoring something like sacraments (both are methods of Heideggerian “clearing”), so the best philosophers don’t try to make insight but have insight, which is to say they don’t try to construct a system by which to understand the world but instead create “clearings” in themselves to observe how the world is “unfolding” before them. In this way, Postmodernism was right to “clear” away so much in our thinking and society, but without “nonrationality,” Postmodernism finds itself incapable of letting anything enter or emerge out of the “clearing.” Dr. Vervaeke is right that we are suffering from a lack of meaning today, but without addressing Illich’s “disablement,” we are disabled from making meaning or finding the courage to let anything enter or emerge from “the clearing.” We end up perhaps improved and morally advanced, but we are still stuck.
The “art of gazing” is indivisible from “the art of living” for Illich, but why do we need to look at anything if we have experts to tell us what’s going on? Indeed, Illich understood that a logic arose that made “cultivating our eyes” an act of “deviance,” for who do we think we are to make statements and discernments about the world if we don’t run a system or if we haven’t made a “system of thought” like a great intellectual? Now, I have written in Thoughts how I think the problem of “system-building” is rarer in great philosophers than we often think, but it’s still the case that the majority of people still perceive philosophy as “systems-building” (versus helping us “clear” and “see”), and indeed many people go through philosophical training never learning the skills of phenomenology, as O’Connor lamented how many students who were trained in writing never learned to see what was “unfolding” before them. She also lamented how people thought a Catholic novel had ‘to be about a saint,’ which made her reflect on how peopled ‘enjoy[ed] indulging [themselves] in [a] logic that kill[ed] [by] making categories smaller and smaller, in prescribing subjects and proscribing attitudes.’⁶⁹¹ Philosophy similarly “kills itself” when only philosophers are allowed to write philosophy, when philosophers have to identify themselves according to certain movements and categories of thought, use a certain lingo and language — the pitfalls O’Connor identifies in literature seem similar to the mistakes philosophy and “abstract reasoning” in general have fallen into. ‘Alienation was once a diagnosis,’ O’Connor noted about literature, ‘but in much of the fiction of our time it has become an ideal.’⁶⁹² “Abstraction was once a diagnosis” too — the vastness of thought and the universe simply were what was and we were in the business of clarifying it — but for some philosophy, abstraction seems to have become the goal. Neither Illich nor Nietzsche fell into this mistake, but for that they seem to have been penalized by universities and intellectuals who might have had a bias for “vast abstractions” (precisely because intellectuals might be good at them and because abstractions can be places in which we can avoid Lacan’s “The Real”).
In a world that believed great writers filled their stories with symbols and elaborate systems of meaning, O’Connor’s thinking couldn’t be readily understand — so it goes with philosophers who focus on “clear observations” that might suggest a Core in a world which associates “philosophy” with “massive systems.” Systems can be counterfeits of “cores,” and it should be noted how phenomenological Core Thinkers must be, precisely because we only see evidence of a Core across numerous and different fields where recurring patterns and notions emerge and “spurt up.” “The Phenomenology of the Artist” by O.G. Rose in mind, Core Thinkers see w in x, y, and z, while System Thinkers use x, y, and z to show w. And to the degree “the case” Core Thinkers make for w is strong is to the degree their observations of x, y, and z are accurate and hence close — thus the need for phenomenology. Likewise, for O’Connor, great writers describe x, y, and z well, and hence “the sacramental meaning of w” naturally emerges (for nature is meaningful and hence just needs to be allowed to “mean”), while bad writers make x, y, and z symbolize w (dishonoring particularity, concretion, and even what Illich called “enfleshment”). To worry about symbols or the like can remove our gaze from concrete and particular reality, which lessens our chances of being able to recognize ‘the whole man’ (and by contrast ‘a freak’ suffering “autocannibalism”).⁶⁹³ This applies to both art and philosophy, and the less we pay attention to life the less we might be able to identify ‘those qualities that endure because they are related to truth’ (and hence might help us know freedom).⁶⁹⁴ According to Saint Gregory, ‘every time the sacred text describe[d] a fact, it reveal[ed] a mystery’: the goal of the artist and philosopher is to be able to say something similar about their work, to suggest a Core of Mystery.⁶⁹⁵ We divide judgement ‘from vision; nature from grace; and reason from the imagination’ at our own peril (the act of which might also remove from us the capacity to recognize our peril).⁶⁹⁶
Because of the required faith that phenomenology honors meaning by forgoing the (ironic) certainty of creating, neither the writer nor philosopher can be entirely sure that from their work emerges some core and/or overarching/sacrament meaning: they must face the risk of failing. It is frightening to fail, and it is frightening to have no answer for the student who asks to understand the meaning of the Misfit’s hat. But we must be naked if we are to have meaning, as the world must be naked and vulnerable, as so made by “the clearing” of our gaze and work. “Core Thinking” requires vulnerability and possibly being accused of randomness and lacking a vision, but just because the Core Thinker cannot directly state his or her vision, that is precisely because the Core Thinker lets the vision emerge on its own — in this way, the Core Thinker has too high of a respect for vision than to think he or she could put it under their power and impose it on the world. Vision must arise. Visionaries don’t have vision but stare on.
As the great writer trusts that a well-told story is inherently meaningful, so the great philosopher trusts that the world’s inherent intelligibility and relationality emerges in observations that we don’t force together. If there is an Absolute in the world, the Absolute will emerge on its own if we rightly see the world (it is not that the world keeps us from the Absolute but that we might not be rightly aligned with the world as Absolute). If the world is sacrament, it needs to be described not symbolized; if the world is meaningful and connected, it needs to be seen not built. As Michelle and I described in our Parallax Course, “Look at the Birds of the Air,” we can think of Illich’s “core” as “An Apocalypse of Nonrationality for the Art of Living,” and Michelle and I favor the word “apocalypse” versus “defense of,” one because it was a term Illich liked, and second because the term means both a “tearing of the veil” and “unveiling.” It is an act of destruction which reveals; it is a bright light which hurts the eye in the act of helping us see. And indeed, nonrationality is apocalyptic for “autonomous rationality,” but it is an apocalypse which leaves open a “clearing” from which a new potential might unfold of Childhood — the question is only if we might “spread” what Illich taught or if it will only ever be a minority who take Illich’s teachings to heart.
No, Ivan Illich never speaks of Game Theory or “Nash Equilibria,” but seeing Illich as identifying “ironies of rationality” and dehumanizing Dynamics which emerge from systems and technologies can help us see him as identifying “Nash Equilibria” even if that was not language he used or knew about (in the same way he makes points like Heidegger and Foucault without ever having read them). We discussed in “Coming to Terms with Childhood” the problem of Nash Equilibria and “Rational Impasses,” and the problem of ending up in situations in which rationality cannot help us escape, and basically what is required is “a spreading of mentidivergent Childhood” so that we might avoid individual and collective “suboptimal results.” Also, if we cannot show that “autonomous rationality” leads to self-effacement (as we have attempted to argue throughout O.G. Rose), then we might talk all day about the needs for the body, emotion, etc. (“other ways of knowing,” like mentidivergent Childhood), but ultimately we’ll likely just fall back onto rationality, subconsciously believing it is best. This is why we have considered Game Theory and Nash Equilibria so closely, to basically force us to take nonrationality seriously. Ivan Illich attempted to do this through reviewing history, an effort we’ve hoped to aid in by highlighting the Game Theory Dynamics implicit in his works. We cannot go back to “autonomous rationality,” for that “Eden” never existed, but we are unfortunately biased to try by “low order” Discourse. We must think what is now unnatural to think to think like humans.
If we think in terms of “adapting to complex systems” (for example), we might not take “adaptation” to mean that we need to make “nonrational choices” (which ultimately means we must face anxiety), which is to say “adapting” might not be the best language to describe what is required of us. I agree with Bonnitta Roy’s emphasis on “responding to unfolding potential,” which might be what some mean by “adapt,” but I’m not sure. “How do we adapt?” could be the same question as “How do we respond?” but it also might not be; regardless, we need to avoid letting ourselves get caught up in “Game Theory Dynamics” that lead to us being stuck in “infinite games” which replace us, failing to incubate intrinsic motivation, giving into the temptation of justifying life in terms of “a spreading philosophical consciousness” (as Hume discussed, as we might consider in the difference between “believing in Christ” and “being like Christ”), ending up “disabled,” and more. These are real risks, and hence why there can be a temptation to leave society behind and seek isolation, which again is an understandable strategy. But if we are not going to isolate ourselves, which is to say we don’t proclaim, “All systems, technologies, society, etc. are bad,” then we must prove “aware” (Illich) and able to give “attention” (Weil) to life in a manner by which we might discern which particular systems and which particular technologies are good versus bad. This suggests why phenomenology becomes central (and why “all-in” and “all-out” social strategies are understandably appealing).
As we’ve noted, if we’re going to say “some technologies are good while others are bad” (and use a similar logic regarding institutions, systems, etc.), then much will ride on our capacity to discern subtle differences, a capacity which we might not be taught in school, suggesting a need for a “phenomenological education” (as both Illich and O’Connor would approve of). Attention (Weil) and Awareness (Illich) matter, and in fact how we are aware of reality can change how it manifests to us, and if we’re not careful we could “slip” into a way of seeing the world that “confirms” Discourse versus Rhetoric (which would be a world where “humanity is replaced” versus “extended”). Iain McGilchrist in his talk with Mahon McCann stressed that everything changes relative to Attention, and that what we consider “real” is relative to how we choose to see things. The Christian cross is made of atoms (Physics), considers of chemical composition (Chemistry), and is also a symbol (Mind) — which of these Vectors (to allude to Bard and Elung) is “most real?” McGilchrist would argue all the Vectors are equally real, that it simply depends on how we choose to pay Attention to the cross. Attention frames what we see and determines the standard by which we decide what is real, and ultimately things in themselves are equally real in many ways. Rationality alone cannot help us make this decision (autonomously), even if we think it does, in the same way that rationality cannot help us decide if Wittgenstein’s “Duck/Bunny” is a duck or a bunny, or which pile of grain Buridan’s Donkey should eat. McGilchrist is basically saying that phenomena are like duck/bunnies with say ten or twelve equally possible interpretations versus just two (things are “High-Geometrical Duck Bunnies,” per se (I couldn’t help myself)), which means we can see things in many different ways equally. If we aren’t aware of this and thus aware we have choices to make (suggesting evidence of freedom), then we will make a choice without realizing it, and then it will seem as if everything was only ever just that one thing (A/A). This is when we can fall into Weil’s Affliction, an enclosure and entrapment we cannot escape, perhaps assuring the right of Discourse over Rhetoric.
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Notes
⁶⁸⁹O’Connor, Flannery. “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988: 853.
⁶⁹⁰O’Connor, Flannery. “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988: 859.
⁶⁹¹O’Connor, Flannery. “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988: 859.
⁶⁹²O’Connor, Flannery. “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988: 856.
⁶⁹³O’Connor, Flannery. “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988: 861.
⁶⁹⁴O’Connor, Flannery. “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988: 861.
⁶⁹⁵O’Connor, Flannery. “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988: 863.
⁶⁹⁶O’Connor, Flannery. “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1988: 864.
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