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Cold epiphanies
Jan. 6th, 2018 05:02 pm
I learned today that in some, apparently mostly Spanish-speaking countries, it's customary (but the custom is apparently dying out) for children to get gifts from the magi on Epiphany rather than from Santa Claus on Christmas. Which makes a lot more sense, dunnit? Anyway, it's much less offensive.
Many years ago it struck me that Santa Claus is a mechanism people use to work out their God issues. Or at least is a weird kind of stand-in for God, in that Santa Claus suffers from very much the same problems God does, including even a problem of evil, or at least of systemic injustice, in that, obviously, poor kids, through no fault of their own, get, relatively, screwed by Santa. (And so you get the Job's-friends kind of crowd explaining that, actually, it would blow poor kids' poor little minds if they got what rich kids got--Santa knows what he's doing, trust Santa!) A couple of weeks ago I happened to read the "Yes, Virginia" editorial, and wow is that ever a sophisticated--I mean, given that it's nominally addressed to an eight-year-old--working out of God issues using Santa as a proxy. And it's about as clear a statement as you could get of just how impossible a mythological theology is for us moderns, because, when it comes right down to it, if little Virginia is a very bright girl, she will read the grown-up bafflegab of that editorial, ponder it, and say: "So, there is no Santa Claus?"
There was a Subaru ad running on the radio around here over the holidays, which had a little girl telling her presumable mother that some kid says there's no such thing as Subaru because no car can possibly have some super-fantastic qualities Subarus are supposed to have--that kid has reasons not to believe in Subaru. The woman says, that's just what Jimmy believes; what do you believe? And the little girl triumphantly proclaims, I believe in Subaru!
Which is pretty clever, and got more and more depressing every time I heard it. Belief is, after all, not completely non-volitional. As Sartre says, you allow yourself to be persuaded by non-persuasive evidence; sometimes you allow yourself to be persuaded by things that are not really evidence at all. Everybody does it. You can't hardly move without doing it. There are good arguments, or at least there is a good (though not necessarily compelling) line of argument, going back at least to Augustine, for doing it in certain contexts: you gotta believe or you'll never know. God won't reveal himself to you if you don't believe first. (It struck me a while ago that you can run a similar kind of argument for politics. We like to scold ourselves for blinkering ourselves with political commitments, but putting blinkers on, figuratively as well as literally, allows you to see things you would otherwise miss, as well as to miss things you would otherwise see. (Then again, the big danger isn't blinkering but projection.)) But, obviously (?), you want to avoid resorting to that as much as you can.
Anyway, the Subaru girl will eventually find herself in the same kind of bind as Virginia (I mean, supposing there aren't actually good epistemic reasons to believe that Subaru exists, which--what?). You will yourself to believe for prudential rather than epistemic reasons--you believe because you're rewarded for believing--but sooner or later you're gonna need something to justify your belief, and prudential reasons just don't cut it. You may discover that there are not actually persuasive epistemic reasons to justify your belief in what you want to believe in. Now you may give up your belief, or you may try to re-frame it by supposing that the thing exists but in a different way. Santa Claus exists, but you won't find him by taking a dog sled across the ice to the North Pole; he exists at the North Pole of your heart. Santa Claus exists in the same way Harry Potter exists. God exists in the same way Santa Claus exists. Which is not the way Virginia means when she asks whether there is a Santa Claus.
Once you've passed the point of re-framing God's existence, it's not clear why Jerusalem is not, at best, on par with Hollywood, which is to say, why the mythology of religion is different from any other mythological fiction. It's not clear, but that doesn't mean you can't see your way to it, if the mythology of religion is the particular realm of the divine. This is why it is in a way easier to be a pagan today than to be a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, because some familiar forms of sophisticated paganism (dealing in archetype and ritual but not in pseudo-physics or the actual divine) don't require openness to any aspect of existence we don't otherwise move in anyway.
I've never been a fan of Santa Claus, as far as anybody knows, and I have really had enough of it. We have Santa because we don't know how to believe in God. If I'm going to have that problem, let me have it about God.
(I dunno about you, but this is getting close to making me hope I give up propositions for Lent again.)
Currently at Havelock: -25.3. High today: -18.3. Didn't get above -20 at either Bancroft or Peterborough today, and once again this morning it was colder at Bancroft than at Alert. Five deer were trooping around the front of the house at dusk tonight; if they're bothered by the cold, you sure couldn't tell. Maybe someday I'll find out why the birds' feet don't freeze solid.
Many years ago it struck me that Santa Claus is a mechanism people use to work out their God issues. Or at least is a weird kind of stand-in for God, in that Santa Claus suffers from very much the same problems God does, including even a problem of evil, or at least of systemic injustice, in that, obviously, poor kids, through no fault of their own, get, relatively, screwed by Santa. (And so you get the Job's-friends kind of crowd explaining that, actually, it would blow poor kids' poor little minds if they got what rich kids got--Santa knows what he's doing, trust Santa!) A couple of weeks ago I happened to read the "Yes, Virginia" editorial, and wow is that ever a sophisticated--I mean, given that it's nominally addressed to an eight-year-old--working out of God issues using Santa as a proxy. And it's about as clear a statement as you could get of just how impossible a mythological theology is for us moderns, because, when it comes right down to it, if little Virginia is a very bright girl, she will read the grown-up bafflegab of that editorial, ponder it, and say: "So, there is no Santa Claus?"
There was a Subaru ad running on the radio around here over the holidays, which had a little girl telling her presumable mother that some kid says there's no such thing as Subaru because no car can possibly have some super-fantastic qualities Subarus are supposed to have--that kid has reasons not to believe in Subaru. The woman says, that's just what Jimmy believes; what do you believe? And the little girl triumphantly proclaims, I believe in Subaru!
Which is pretty clever, and got more and more depressing every time I heard it. Belief is, after all, not completely non-volitional. As Sartre says, you allow yourself to be persuaded by non-persuasive evidence; sometimes you allow yourself to be persuaded by things that are not really evidence at all. Everybody does it. You can't hardly move without doing it. There are good arguments, or at least there is a good (though not necessarily compelling) line of argument, going back at least to Augustine, for doing it in certain contexts: you gotta believe or you'll never know. God won't reveal himself to you if you don't believe first. (It struck me a while ago that you can run a similar kind of argument for politics. We like to scold ourselves for blinkering ourselves with political commitments, but putting blinkers on, figuratively as well as literally, allows you to see things you would otherwise miss, as well as to miss things you would otherwise see. (Then again, the big danger isn't blinkering but projection.)) But, obviously (?), you want to avoid resorting to that as much as you can.
Anyway, the Subaru girl will eventually find herself in the same kind of bind as Virginia (I mean, supposing there aren't actually good epistemic reasons to believe that Subaru exists, which--what?). You will yourself to believe for prudential rather than epistemic reasons--you believe because you're rewarded for believing--but sooner or later you're gonna need something to justify your belief, and prudential reasons just don't cut it. You may discover that there are not actually persuasive epistemic reasons to justify your belief in what you want to believe in. Now you may give up your belief, or you may try to re-frame it by supposing that the thing exists but in a different way. Santa Claus exists, but you won't find him by taking a dog sled across the ice to the North Pole; he exists at the North Pole of your heart. Santa Claus exists in the same way Harry Potter exists. God exists in the same way Santa Claus exists. Which is not the way Virginia means when she asks whether there is a Santa Claus.
Once you've passed the point of re-framing God's existence, it's not clear why Jerusalem is not, at best, on par with Hollywood, which is to say, why the mythology of religion is different from any other mythological fiction. It's not clear, but that doesn't mean you can't see your way to it, if the mythology of religion is the particular realm of the divine. This is why it is in a way easier to be a pagan today than to be a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, because some familiar forms of sophisticated paganism (dealing in archetype and ritual but not in pseudo-physics or the actual divine) don't require openness to any aspect of existence we don't otherwise move in anyway.
I've never been a fan of Santa Claus, as far as anybody knows, and I have really had enough of it. We have Santa because we don't know how to believe in God. If I'm going to have that problem, let me have it about God.
(I dunno about you, but this is getting close to making me hope I give up propositions for Lent again.)
Currently at Havelock: -25.3. High today: -18.3. Didn't get above -20 at either Bancroft or Peterborough today, and once again this morning it was colder at Bancroft than at Alert. Five deer were trooping around the front of the house at dusk tonight; if they're bothered by the cold, you sure couldn't tell. Maybe someday I'll find out why the birds' feet don't freeze solid.
