|
 Interrogations
By
Ophelia Benson
An
eclectic, literary challenge to everyday thinking.
Number
Eleven: Done and Not Done
Some
things we are born, others we make ourselves, or don't. We are born
animals, vertebrates, mammals, primates, apes, humans, female or
male. That decides quite a lot for us right there. We won't be spending
our days hanging upside down in caves, and our nights flying around
eating insects. Nor will we spend the spring as a blossom, the summer
as a plum, and the autumn as a rotting brown blob in the grass.
So many possibilities ruled out before we begin. But there are a
good many possibilities that are in our own hands; it’s odd how
many choices we abdicate. We decide not to decide, choose not to
choose. Or perhaps we don’t, really. We don’t so much decide, as
go along with what everyone else is doing, we take our cues from
what’s acceptable in the culture around us without even noticing
that we could decide. Like T.H. White’s ants whose only adjectives
are ‘done’ and ‘not done’.
Well,
the Zeitgeist is a stern taskmaster, that’s not news. And there’s
a bit of swings and roundabouts to it. What it takes away with one
hand it gives with the other. Some possibilities become invisible
or at least much harder to see, but then others emerge from the
shadows. But it’s worth being greedy and trying to have it both
ways: trying to second-guess the Zeitgeist and shine a strong light
on the possibilities it has left in shadow.
One
set of ideas the Zeitgeist has shoved to the front of the stage
at present is the profound importance and authenticity and centrality
of identity. We brood lovingly over our own and each other's 'identities'
and come up with ever new ingredients to define them with. But we
mix them all up, we confuse categories, we get the map all wrong.
As if we tried to make a cake out of flour and oil and eggs and
nails and justice and New Jersey. In particular we mix up the things
we are born, with the things we decide, or would decide if we weren't
so spineless; we confuse genes with ideas, essence with accident,
nature with art, innate with acquired characteristics, as if no
one had ever taken high school biology and learned about Lysenko.
This
is particularly noticeable when it comes to religion, especially
when we talk about certain parts of the world. Ireland leaps to
mind, and so does Israel. But there is also what is so often referred
to as 'the Muslim world', as if everyone born in a country where
the majority religion is Islam is ipso facto a Muslim, like it or
not. But the fact is, however much the identity-huggers try to turn
(other people's) religion into an attribute on a par with eye colour,
religion is in reality a cognitive matter: it is a system of ideas
and truth claims that one can think about, using one's mind,
and then accept or reject. Just exactly as one can and should think
about one's political views before deciding what they are, one can
and should analyze and interrogate the religion of one's ancestors,
and accept or reject it accordingly.
But
we don't. We fail even to notice that a whole large area of human
life is in fact a realm of thoughts, of ideas. Along with neo-Lysenkoism,
we have neo-Romanticism, or not so much neo as never went away Romanticism,
in which we're so suspicious of the mind that we attribute its activities
to other, less autonomous and conscious parts of the body. We know
things in our guts, we believe and decide things with our hearts,
and we choose a religion with our genes. Soon we'll be studying
history with our elbows and learning math with our feet. 'What,
my foot my tutor?' Prospero said. Well, maybe so.
We
don't like the head. We make no bones about it: the head is simply
not our cup of tea. It's too cold, too unfeeling, too rational;
and then it thinks so well of itself, it's always looking down its
nose at everyone, it considers the heart and gut as simply beneath
its notice. It's not a good mixer, it's got ideas above its station,
it thinks it's so smart, who does it think it is.
Some
of our hostility and suspicion about the head is perhaps rooted
in fears about the shallowness, the unreliability of any 'merely'
intellectual commitments. We don't trust ourselves. We know that
any decisions we make we can also unmake. We don't trust the voluntary
realm, because we know how undependable we are. If the police knock
on the door, if bankruptcy or starvation looms, if the cough won't
go away or the purple bruises start to appear, or alas even if we
get a better offer, if there's a chance for a really good meal or
a really gorgeous lover or a really handsome bribe, perhaps we'll
change our minds. 'I sold you and you sold me,' as Orwell puts it.
So
we like to bind ourselves. We like to commit ourselves to the things
we think important by ties we can't break if we want to: specifically
by that double-helix chain that fetters us from conception. But
the price is too high. Loyalty and solidarity are good but so is
the ability to judge and question and think for ourselves, and it's
a mistake to lash ourselves to the mast in fear of its Siren call.
Religion is a human invention, and a rather ricketty and dangerous
one at that; as a human invention it is open to human judgement.
Ophelia
Benson is editor of Butterflies and Wheels - .
.
Interrogations
will next be updated early April 2003
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Interrogations
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