Monday, April 20, 2015

The market is not God

Your mind comes into the universe once and only once. Why do we waste time and energy discussing such trivial topics? Let's talk about how we're going to perfect our minds. Let's figure out what steps we can take right now to help each other perfect our minds. Enough small talk. Enough superficiality. Let's dive down to the depths.

There's an empty depth, says Hegel, as well as an empty breadth. Isn't talking about the quest for depth without ever actually saying anything deep just another form of superficiality? No, I don't think so. I leave the depth empty so you can discover for yourself what's there.

Sit in a quiet place, says Siddhartha, and concentrate your attention on your breath. Siddhartha teaches you how to dispel repetitive, superficial thoughts and find the stillness you need to gain access to the depths of your mind. But he doesn't tell you what you'll find there.

Augustine's confessions will be read so long as it and man survive. The latest blockbuster will be forgotten within decades. Talk to God, not to your contemporaries. There's no need to dumb down your vocabulary. Make your readers become more God-like by giving them a challenge. Speak in language that will force them to think. Most will merely close the book and look for an easier one. But the one reader you want—the one who wants to be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect—he will persevere.

When Diogenes was kidnapped and offered for sale in the slave market, potential buyers asked what his skills were. “Ruling men,” he replied. Buyers wanted someone to pander to their desires. But a philosopher teaches men to overcome their desires and put better ones in their place.

The writer I admire is the one who rules me. He doesn't offer to entertain me. He says, “I will tyrannize you. I will force you to become better, smarter, holier, harder, more exacting.” He demands that my mind become more perfect in order to understand him.

The commercial writer, on the other hand, doesn't offer to rule me. He allows me to rule him. He doesn't teach me to overcome my philistinism and ignorance. He panders to it. The way to be popular isn't to improve me. It's to pander to my stupidity.

"Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," says Matthew. What's the perfect you? How you will achieve it? Ask yourself this question every day. The answer might not be the same as yesterday.

If I'm purveying food, should I let money be my guide, serving customers with money and sending away those with empty pockets? Or should I let conscience be my guide, serving the most malnourished? Anyone engaged in commerce will be compelled to serve those with money and ignore those without it. This is clearly a very imperfect way of deciding whom to serve and whom to ignore.

Francis of Assisi understood that money was a means of evading the difficult question of who is worthy of help and who should be ignored. He wisely refused to even touch money, and demanded the same of his disciples.

The premise of commerce is that all the rich customer's desires must be fulfilled. But all desires other than the desire to be perfect merely waste time and resources. They should never be fulfilled. They must be completely ignored.

Of course all this flies in the face of common sense. We live in a world in which very few sincerely seek to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. We can expect, therefore, that common sense in this world will be an obstacle rather than an aid in the path to perfection. Did Saint Anthony consult common sense before he retreated to the desert? If he had, he would not have become a saint.

I came very close to being a perfect engineer. But a perfect engineer, like a perfect lawyer or soldier, never questions the goals of his activity. His mind is confined to selection of means. Selection of ends is up to his superiors. The question was bound to arise eventually: is it plausible to pursue perfection without demanding that the ends as well as the means be perfect? I asked myself this question after fifteen years. Then I finally understood that engineering could never be a way to fulfill my desire to be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect. All that time was wasted.

Serious and sustained intellectual attention to any subject, Simone Weil points out, can teach us the discipline we need to devote serious and sustained intellectual attention to God. A perfect understanding of geometry makes my soul more perfect because the discipline I use to obtain this understanding is the same discipline I need to understand the will of God. The activity to which I devote my most serious and sustained intellectual attention is the most important part of my spiritual life.

Nothing stands between the mathematician and God. But when the engineer looks up, his view of heaven is obscured by the market. There are many men and women wiser than he who might help him grow closer to God. But the impersonal market strips all accidental features like virtue and wisdom from its participants.

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