I forgot to post what I did and thought on the last weekend before leaving.
First Felix came over for a long morning conversation about politics, the allure of Adorno, his Ph.D thesis, and his new gig at a Catholic Benedictine College near Naperville. At 1:00 pm I went to the conversational luncheon of the volunteer tutoring program I’ve been involved with, hoping to get some leads or some assistance finding household help in the summer. After this, I picked up Erik and his friend Ben, whom he knows from his French class, and brought them over to our house for a long conversation on politics, literature, and travel. Both are very bright and open-minded young guys, Ben though only a freshman is both self-possessed and eager to absorb suggestions, ideas, names, and recommended film or book titles. Midway through the conversation, Alan joined us, bringing beer and pizza and chicken livers. Alan can wax professorial, more given to lecturing than exchanging views and arguing. I sent them all on their way before eight and tried to relax. My intention is to invite guests, friends old and new, who might feel comfortable stopping by when I’m no longer able to get out. It seems that every day my wife and son become kinder and gentler, more understanding toward me. They don’t ask but they sense what is happening. At first, my affliction threatened their confidence in stability. Now they can see that I’m increasingly helpless but doing my best. I don’t intend to turn into a high-maintenance basket case burdening them forever. I’ve ruminated my way to one possible exit strategy, the only one that makes sense, neither suicide nor a deliberate unplugging of a machine. It’s what the old and infirm have always instinctively done. It of course requires determination.
On Sunday, I read the NYT opinion pieces and NYT magazine. One piece was about the contributor’s autism diagnosis and about how this, and all other pseudo identities, confer authority and identity. I’ve been thinking and commenting about this for a long time. I’ve always seen it as the nearer side of an historical watershed in which opponents of the system went from actively seeking change to claiming and trading on victim status, what I used to call, cruelly, ‘the whineocracy.’ Another article in the magazine section was about Twitter as a “vibe-detection machine.” The article convinced me that the social media are so pervasive and overpowering in their ability to shape all social communication, that resistance looks more and more futile. Totalitarianism is not quite the proper word for it. The social media act more like a vast tar baby into which we are lured by our impulses of resentment and vanity. Struggling against it only gets us in deeper. Resistance would be up against the nuclear menace of A.I. with its vast new potential to unleash an “arsenal of mass destruction” of bots and deepfakes.
What is the defense against this onslaught of digital falsehood? During the early modern religious conflicts of the 1500s and 1600s, the “real presence of God” was a tenet that distinguished the spirits and commanded allegiance unto death. Now I can imagine that a human “real presence” beyond all mediation and representation might become the new criterion for any truth worth dying for. How that would function in reality I do not know. Images come to mind of the dissidents who conducted their conversations in parks or open spaces to avoid the bugged and wired surveillance of the state, images of stalwarts who sacrificed themselves for friends and family. How could such a cloistered resistance ever gain momentum? It would have to assume the shadowy presence of Mazzini’s secretive Young Italy, stealing its way toward its own Risorgimento. And clandestine societies are vulnerable to spies and provocateurs. Yet revolutionary movements have succeeded, despite those traps and obstacles, because their ideas were so powerful that even their opponents inadvertently advanced their cause.
Actually, the analogy with the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence of the trinitarian deity is not so far-fetched. The Hegelian strain of Marxism has always recognized that theology had embodied the ordinates of social theory and politics. The medieval hierarchies were embodied equally in theology and society. The sixteenth-century’s revolutionary challenge to medieval hierarchy likewise advanced on two fronts: every lay believer held authority based on a reading of scripture (though of course not all readings could be valid if authority was to be based on truth). Real presence centered and anchored the individual and the real community of the faithful. Where it went wrong was mainly in expecting scripture to yield a single conclusive truth. Instead it yielded as many competing interpretations as society knew competing class interests. This notwithstanding, faith in the truth of a “real presence” moved mountains and inspired communities. Real presence shifted the source of meaning and the object of faith from distant exalted instances to the here and now, to a real presence of us. Who can say whether such a shift is still conceivable now. Could real groups congregate, debate, resolve, and network to effect real change? I don’t know. What I do know is that many are starved for the real community and deeper significance it might embody. I know because I am one of them and can see it in others who are starved for human presence but stifle their hunger with sawdust from the social media buzz. Real human presence: the hand on the shoulder, the intimate tone that cannot be faked.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 