The Blue Flower

I saw that Post Modernism keeps the Mystery alive links to one of my earlier articles on this blog. I am a little nonplussed about the concept of post-modernism being erected into a “philosophical movement”. If this is a movement, what is a movement?

I am brought to think that we are not dealing with a movement at all, or a political tendency, or an ideology, or a religion or anything. To me, it seems like the way some individual persons relate to the society in which they live and by what means they defend their own personality. In short, an Englishman’s home is his castle.

Society at large goes through various phases. In the western world, you are everything if you have money (and everything will be done to take that money away from you) and nothing if you don’t have money. Apart from the technology we have, our society seems little different from the early nineteenth century, the eighteenth or even before. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer – and eventually you get a revolution, an oscillation of the political pendulum over centuries, and the machine is reset and started up again. And so begins a new cycle. In between times, there has been a number of attempts to implement various types of socialism and nationalism, and they all failed sooner or later.

Society is all about making human beings relate to each other by the constraints of law and economics. A man is worth his money, and then when that doesn’t impress him, he can be clobbered by the law for being anti-social. Thus, human society self-regulates. As churches became institutionalised, they all had to some extent or another acquiesce to this society model based on money and law. In the end, the Church becomes a part of society and follows its conventions and norms. The drama of Jesus Christ was the relationship between the human person and the “machine”, “system”, “matrix” or whatever we want to call it according to our favourite analogies.

The dream of a post-modernist church is utopian like the idea of anarchy. As a system for society, any kind of utopianism falls on its face, Soviet communism being a prime example. Anti-capitalist egalitarianism seems something close to the Gospel, and it can work for individual persons and even small communities like monasteries, but it becomes corrupted when applied to a nation or some kind of “empire”. Communism as first thought up by Marx, Gramsci and others was not very different from what is described in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles – but it became corrupt and influenced by “The Pit” (money and power, the Third Temptation or all three of them) and killed millions of human beings in the twentieth century. Nazism was national socialism, also based on good intentions – and we still reel from the slime of its evil.

My own thinking, since childhood, has brought me to a fairly “anarchist” way of thinking, but I know that the structures in place cannot be demolished and society will never be other than what it is. This dialectic between the genius of individuals and society is the reason that explains why Christianity splits. Renewal is only possible by leaving the corrupt institution and beginning anew with the ideals rather than the structures of political dominance and power. After a time, the process repeats itself. The key to authentic Christianity seems to be keeping institutionalism to a minimum and keeping communities small and geared to persons rather than the cohesion of society.

We will not change society that is based on power and money, consumerism and comfort. As persons, we have to make our choices in life. We give in and sell our souls, or we find a way to live with the system and remain free in the spirit – the theme you find in Berdyaev and many of those who lived under Soviet communism and Nazism, and those who live in modern cities and work in large corporations. Another way is “living off the grid”, needing as little money as possible, living under the radar. That is the way of life that characterised the Hippies in the 1960’s and men like Bernard Moitessier whose world was the sea and his boat. It is the “secular” version of St Francis of Assisi’s vocation, the radical choice of following Christ.

There is a half-way house, which is quite illusory and which I have tried to practice myself, living in the system but outside cities, living in the country. The problem is making enough money to keep it going. Even with the radical decision, for example going to sea, you still need an income to eat, maintain the boat, pay port fees, get medical help when needed and so forth. Living in a small village is something of a compromise. You need more money, and the more you get, the more you have to pay in taxes and social contributions, and the more the vicious circle gains momentum.

We have to situate our freedom elsewhere, for as long as we live in bodies and are driven by the survival instinct. The way we do this is what is called vocation. We have to count the cost for every decision we make in life to have the freedom to love and bring beauty to this world. One man will cast off his boat, and another will enter a monastery, and another will get married and negotiate with the system in order to enable his children to grow up in the best conditions possible. It’s a choice for all of us.

If there is a post-modernism, it is a capacity to be critical of our conditions of life and their constraints. We won’t change Leviathan but we will think about the way we live with it and keep our distance, even if only invisibly. It all depends on our perception. If we get something of this, we will begin to understand what Christ was getting at in his criticism of the “system” of the Scribes and Pharisees and his Kingdom parables and the Beatitudes. The meaning is inward and secret.

Attempts to found “emerging churches” on such inner intuitions seem to be a contradiction. I have never seen an “emerging” church. I have read many theories and ideas but have seen nothing in reality. What is reality? That is the question. Again we are faced with choices: the official state Church, Rome or one of the ancient Patriarchates, one of the older non-conformist churches or the non-conformism to different extents of our own age. Many people leave churches like Moitessier left society for the sea and the Pacific islands, in order to find their spiritual relationship with the Absolute and the Transcendent. We then begin to explore the idea of pantheism and the metaphysical unity of creation and Creator. Left to ourselves, we become the “vilest of heretics” in the eyes of the institutionalised religions whose gods increasingly identify with Mammon and political power. Yet the very principle that makes us persons is the relationship of Communion. It is a paradox we have to live with.

This is why it would be futile to want to institutionalise our personal aspirations. We live with what we have and make the best of it. Like little children, we all have secret gardens and parcels of heaven. There seems to be nothing more to say.

When I was a teenager, I saw a new book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was something I never read. I didn’t seem to be able to relate to something like this at the time. I just thought that it was a strange combination of ideas, from Buddhist meditation techniques to something as prosaic as the work of a mechanic servicing the machines that make schoolboys dream. I am almost in a mind to buy this book and read it, because it is a work of philosophy arising from the cultures that formed our baby-boomer generation.

Going by what I read about this work, there are two essential ideas corresponding with the two parts of the title, namely the desire for something like self-knowledge and “being” on one hand, and on the other, seeking to know the details and reasons for everything, having an enquiring mind. Oddly, this is often the binary that is found in a relationship between a man and a woman. Men often love technical things and reasons for everything, whilst a woman goes by emotion, immediate necessities and instincts. Of course, there are exceptions to these stereotypes, and life has many surprises for us all. If any of my readers has read this book, comments would be most welcome.

How was I brought to think about this product of our age and something so eschewed by those who would love to go back to the 1920’s or the nineteenth century? A very interesting blog linked to one of my articles – Real Rest is the Best dedicated to, I’ll put it in his words – “I am a beloved child of God, and so are you. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. My main interests in life include Nature, music, spirituality, inspiration, philosophy, sports, reading and photography“. I wondered at first whether this blog was not some kind of machine-manufactured spam site to get us to buy something. No, it is obviously a real blog with some quite enlightening articles in the light of my recent discovery of those who go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters.

The main theme dealt with in this blog is the ever-elusive post-modernism, or the revolt by people of our time against discredited old structures and social conventions. Knowing whether the blog author is an “orthodox” Christian is of no concern to me. There are some fascinating articles. I mentioned Nietzsche in his solitude in the Swiss Alps when writing about the sea, and then I discover Finding solitude where our hearts can grow in love and the quote “the only cure for loneliness is solitude”.

Continuing on from my reflections about solitary yachting, I see so many of my own intuitions reflected in this article. There are two notions that are related but distinct: loneliness and solitude. Loneliness is the condition of alienation found in the writings of existentialists like Sartre, the feeling of alienation from the society in which we feel we need to be integrated and resulting loss of self-esteem. Solitude, on the other hand, is a decision to retreat from the “world” to recover our purpose in life and sense of identity – to seek God. In the tradition of the Church, you can enter a monastery and become a hermit when your Abbot thinks you are ready for it, or you can simply go on a retreat for a week.

I have done retreats, but find them of little meaning. St Ignatius of Loyola had many ideas that are reflected by aspects of modern psychology. For example, you don’t make a decision when you’re upset! He would call it the discernment of spirits. But, many people find such experiences tremendously fulfilling, and retreats can be very useful for spiritual and personal growth. That is if those responsible are mature human beings, which has not always been the case in my experience!

The best retreat need not take more than a week, but away from people, churches and religious establishments. Try camping for a few days in the woods or the mountains if you get seasick… Just a short walk in the park after work for city-dwellers can make all the difference.  It takes a very special kind of person to cope with nine months at sea, as we saw with the account of the 1968-69 non-stop circumnavigation race. Crowhurst was driven to insanity, Moitessier found himself and rejected the rules of the race and Knox-Johnston seems more to have had the “profile” of the motorcycle mechanic, the practical man who kept his mind on the job and returned home to richly-deserved fame and glory. Between Moitessier and Knox-Johnston, who was right? Some of my readers ask this question and see the limitations of those who would have strong opinions of what is right and wrong.

Have a look at this blog, even if it doesn’t seem to be “your thing”. I find depth of thought, something less messy than dismantled motorcycle engines and less “exotic” than Buddhist meditation, perhaps close to our own gardens of the soul…