Theodicy in Goethe's Faust

“To satisfy a heart so deeply agitated”: Theodicy in Goethe’s Faust

            The archetypal Faust of legend is a withdrawn academic with a dangerous and selfish obsession with esoterica. This Faust’s folly serves as a reminder not to transgress social sanctions against magic and dark arts. On the contrary, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe presents a Faust who, through the introduction of the plague backstory, is a complex and tortured individual who turns to the devil only after encountering the seemingly intractable problem of evil. In this confrontation he loses his means of comprehending the world and his place in it. This Faust’s journey is ultimately a theodicean exposition of evil as sent by God to separate those who continue striving despite evil from those content to cling to earthly pleasures.

            One may assume that God is omniscient during the Prelude in Heaven. He is well aware of Faust’s transgressions, his propensity towards the dark arts and even his lack of religiosity. Mephistopheles takes puckish delight in the choice, astounded by his good luck in drawing an opponent that seems to need no defeating. As Faust himself soon puts it, “Although I hear your gospel, I do not believe it” (765). Why would God choose a champion ostensibly so poorly qualified to dance with the devil? This question forms the crux of the dramatic tension in Goethe’s Faust. The audience is introduced to a Faust who is despondent, without faith, and who nearly poisons himself within the first, “Night” scene. Considering the intertextual reference to the Book of Job, which contains a similar deal with a devil, Goethe creates the expectation that God will pick a champion with as much integrity as the biblical Job. Furthermore, the Faust archetypal character is one who has been negatively associated with magic, esotericism, and pride for centuries in German folklore. Indeed, if Milton’s trick was to lead the audience into identifying with Satan, Goethe’s counter is to give every surface-level indication that God himself has erred in choosing Faust as his champion.

            The rub is that this is not so, and while this is apparent to any audience at the play’s conclusion, an attentive theatergoer may pick up several indications otherwise early in the play[1]. Several episodes, particularly the illumination of Faust’s history and psychology by the Old Peasant in town, elucidate Faust as a dynamic, striving individual who is frustrated and perplexed by the problem of evil. Goethe’s Faust comes to the sorry state the audience meets him in due to characteristics valued by God, including perseverance and a desire to understand the world. Put plainly, Faust’s existential crisis is due to the incomprehensibility of evil on earth.

            The plague destroys the tools with which Faust is equipped to understand the world. When he (and his father) is unable to cure all the victims of the plague using their training in medicine, his trust in science is destroyed. Their efforts, he relates, are entirely futile, and Faust goes so far as to blame himself for many of the deaths. This account the audience should not trust in the face of what has just transpired in the village square, when the Old Peasant gives the audience reason to believe that Faust has always used his superior talents for the good of the village, that he did save many lives during the plague, and is an active and admired member of the community. Faust presents a classic case of survivor’s guilt—as the Old Peasant points out, “[Faust] always would come out unharmed” (1004). This introduces a psychological edge to his obsession with overcoming the limits of knowledge. This obsession, the audience learns, only develops to dabbling in summoning devils after he has “wept and sighed and wrung my hands/believing that such efforts could extort/from God in heaven termination of the plague” (1026-1028). His prayers are unanswered, destroying his religious faith on top of his faith in science.

            Stripped of the two lenses that dominate Western ways of thinking about the world, Faust is understandably cynical. He is devastated all the more, the audience learns, because of the intensity of his desire to know, more than anything, why? He is utterly at odds with Wagner’s assertion that it might be sufficient for him to “practice with punctilious exactness/the skills of the profession” (1057-1058), without questioning or aspiring to anything greater. The flighty language employed by Faust to communicate his innate dissatisfaction with life fails entirely to resonate, in turn, with Wagner. The thought that there may be something more is for Wagner “an urge I never yet have felt” (1101). This lays bare an essential difference between Faust and Wagner which serves to illuminate an important distinction in the interpretation of Faust as theodicy: that between those like Faust, who “struggle from the dust to rise” and those like Wagner who merely “grip the earth with all its senses” (1114-1116). Wagner, and his ilk, are whom God speaks of in the Prologue when he says, “Human activity slackens all too easily,/and people soon are prone to rest on any terms” (340-341). It seems safe to say that this applies to the majority of humankind. Faust is exceptional. Interestingly, Wagner’s supposition that learning is useful merely for social ends, as a way to “affect [people] with rhetoric” (533) foreshadows Mephistopheles’ later suggestions that one’s medical degree be used as a means to purely social (sexual) ends.

            Faust is all the more spiteful of these lost worldviews because they were so integral to his comprehension of the world. The qualities that make him a good champion—morality, inquisitiveness, and intelligence—are the same that nearly lead him to suicide. In lieu of science and religion, the two socially acceptable ways of looking at the world, Faust has no choice but to turn to magic. Mephistopheles mistakenly attributes this choice to pride, saying Faust is a “fool not content with earthly food or drink” (301). Indeed, even so late as Part II, Act V, Mephistopheles does not recognize that Faust’s nature is one that will eventually turn him towards God; even though Faust has finally realized his error and seeks to right it with the building of the canal, Mephistopheles still believes “Your striving serves no one but us” (11545). The lust he sees as evidence of sin in Faust is simply wayward curiosity about the world, curiosity which God values. Mephistopheles, unlike God, does not see the potential in Faust’s nature for this curiosity to be turned to positive ends. This estimation is made, the audience would do well to remember, by the very devil, who has his own motives for seeing sin everywhere.

            The devil’s estimation, nonetheless, seems on the surface to hold water, especially given the incongruity of Faust’s behavior towards Gretchen with God’s championing of this unlikely hero. However, Faust’s conduct is a perversion rather than a negation of his character. His insatiable desire to control his fate in the wake of his existential crisis, coupled with the influence of Mephistopheles, leads him to unhealthily channel his generalized Christian caritas into lust for Gretchen. His actions—deflowering Gretchen and running away, to start—are sinful, but they mask an underlying and persistently striving nature (even if it is for rather profane ends). As God declaims in the Prologue in Heaven, “Men err as long as they keep striving,” (316); he seems willing to allow for sin so long as it results in a balance of good. In Faust’s case, it is necessary for him to go through sin to realize the error of his ways and repent with his final acts on earth in Part II. In a revealing quotation, God gets to the heart of theodicy by offering that “Human activity slackens all too easily,/and people soon are prone to rest on any terms;/that’s why I like to give them the companion/ who functions as a prod and does a job as devil” (340-343). The contract between Faust and the devil, one recalls, is that Mephistopheles will not be able to negate Faust’s striving nature—which he fails to do[2]. The implicit statement is that it is better to strive and err than to rest easy; it is better to be a Faust than to be a Wagner. Restlessness over complacency.

        It seems gratuitous to say that God is behind everything in Faust, but it is necessary and accurate. Faust is a framed story, and uses this extended literary conceit as a cue to the meaning of the narrative contained within. Aristotle referred to the demiurge as an unmoved mover, and this is an appropriate way to think about God in Faust. He is the one who sets everything in motion, laying down the challenge by asking Mephistopheles “Do you know Faust?” (207). Furthermore, an omniscient God would not make the deal with the devil unless he was confident of its future success. Goethe’s Mephistopheles does not come close to approaching a Manichean-style, independent force of evil that is on par with its cosmic opposite; on the contrary, the devil refers to himself as “among Your servants” (275). Faust, without undergoing the Mephistopheles-induced tragedies that make up the bulk of Faust I, would not have found the redemption he receives at the end of Faust II. That the devil is not just lesser in power but actually contained and used by God is a departure and a key point in the Faustian theodicy. God proclaims, “I soon shall lead [Faust] into clarity,” and proceeds to send Mephistopheles as a guide, showing that Mephistopheles is but a tool on the divine Swiss Army knife. This inference becomes a generalized theodicy rather than a specific case when considered in conjunction with Mephistopheles’ later profession that “my essence is/what you call sin, destruction/or—to speak plainly—Evil” (1340)[3].

        In expanding Faust’s character in such a way that makes this theodicean interpretation possible, Goethe draws upon one of the most harped-on philosophical debates in 18^th-century Europe[4]. While this debate was especially heated in this particular time and place, to thusly restrict it is to disrespect the richness of human explanations of theodicy across time and space. American interpretive anthropologist Clifford Geertz has written of this universality, saying of theodicy in religion everywhere, “the effort is not to deny the undeniable—that there are unexplained events, that life hurts, or that rains falls upon the just—but to deny that there are inexplicable events, that life is unendurable, and that justice is a mirage” (Geertz 108). When Geertz refers to the Indonesian proverb about the puzzling fact that rain falls on the heads of good men too, it is not hard to envision Faust cringing at the reminder that men died in the plague and he was powerless to stop it.

        Faust’s cosmology is encapsulated in the archangel Raphael’s words that open the Prologue in Heaven: “All that was wrought, too great for comprehension/still has the splendor of its primal day” (249-250). This includes evil. Faust’s struggle to comprehend the incomprehensible, to make sense of why rain falls on the heads of good men, is in God’s eyes preferable to Wagnerian complacency, and God anticipates the errors Faust makes in his journey. Faust’s cynicism is shown to be characteristic of his underlying nature, which never ceases to strive, and evil itself is subsumed by the totality of God. Faust’s “innate urge/to rise aloft and soar along” (I.1092-3) causes problems along the way, and is paradoxically both the source of his Weltschmerz at the beginning and redemption at the end. Good and evil are made vestigial by Goethe’s innovation: for once, it is the effort that counts, and evil is rendered a method to differentiate and even reorient towards God.

Works Consulted

Geertz, Clifford. "Religion as a cultural system." The interpretation of cultures: selected essays (1993): 87-125. Blackboard. Davidson College. Web. 12 Feb. 2010.

Gietzen, Sheri. "Essay on Emerson and Goethe." Virginia Commonwealth University. Web. 12 Feb. 2010.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust I & II. Trans. Stuart Atkins. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 1994. Print.

Rossi, Philip, "Kant's Philosophy of Religion", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

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[1] While Faust is incredibly difficult to stage, I will use treat the work as a play; if it is interpreted otherwise, the appellations of “reader” for “audience” or “theatergoer” is acceptable and does not change my argument in any way.

[2] By showing him a moment of such pleasure that he no longer wishes for anything more (1692-3).

[3] Goethe was a pantheist; that evil might be subsumed by the totality of the deity dovetails well with his personal philosophy.

[4] I know Faust was not published until the 19^th century, but it reflected upon the legacy of Leibniz, Spinoza, Milton, Voltaire, and other 18^th-century commentators on the problem of evil, and indeed was itself largely composed in the 18^th century.

Existential nihilism

Occam's razor--we must make as few leaps as possible. I do not know anything. I am no exception to the rules of the universe. These laws are physical. There are no moral laws except those we construct, which are entirely arbitrary. There is no inherent meaning or purpose to life. If I do exist, and the world exists, the world must have had a cause, a Prime Mover. This cause is called God, and its definition is entirely unknown aside from this requirement; it is entirely possible that there is nothing else to it. Received knowledge of all kinds is inherently untrustworthy because of the flawed nature of the lens through which I perceive the world. I am perfect in my imperfection. I cannot ever know the thoughts of another possible being. Most of the statutes which govern our social behavior are entirely arbitrary, and it is perfectly believable that society could have turned out in a way such that these statutes would be reversed. There is randomness in the world that cannot be reduced to anything more than randomness, and there is complexity in the world that can be reduced to simplicity. Nothing intrinsically matters, because meaning is intrinsically relative and therefore not intrinsic to anything at all. There may be some semblance of agency, but I am governed in large part by neural circuitries and ingrained behaviors that I am unconscious of.

Because of all this I am perfectly free to construct my own reality. From this nothingness I see beauty everywhere, in contradiction and coalescence. The sandbox is open. Life as experience is largely out of my hands, but what I can control I seize tightly. What is plastic is molded to my what will I have--and one cannot know the pervasiveness of plasticity until one attempts to mold it.

Intolerant of Intolerance?: Fracture and Reconciliation at Davidson College

Hayden Higgins

ANT370

Dr. Lozada

12/9/2009

Intolerant of Intolerance?: Fracture and Reconciliation at Davidson College

            One might presume the realm of legitimate discourse at Davidson College, a leading liberal-arts college, to be fairly broad. After all, an institute of higher education must be able to deal with myriad ethical and political questions. Why, then, did the publication of “Homosexuality against Christian tradition” cause such an uproar—and why did this uproar die down so quickly (Spangler 2009)? The article constituted a breach in the tacit agreement between campus group against publicly asserting hierarchical structures. However, institutions in Davidson used normalizing machinery such as public ritual to symbolically ameliorate the rift, resulting in cathartic social theater that renormalized relations without addressing the underlying tension between groups at Davidson.

            The whole process as it occurred at Davidson consists of five steps. Firstly there is tension within stasis; socially constructed barriers restrain any group from asserting ownership (even while they desire to) over any kind of absolute Truth, resulting in a postmodern fragmentation of groups within a democratic structure. Second is the publication of the article, a breach in the constructed barriers between groups and a breach of the perceived social agreement against confrontation. Third is the initial furor following the publication of the article—a crisis mode, characterized by declarations made in anger and the polarization of the campus. Fourth, institutional mobilization kicks in, resulting in negative feedback that generally unifies and symbolically heals Davidson society. Fifth is a sense of renormalization, evinced by marginalization through ridicule of extreme positions and mutual assurances that the breach is an isolated incident and not evidence of underlying conflict in society. All in all, this process illustrates the difficulty of an insurrection of subjugated knowledge within a postmodern, fragmented society.

            While the position of the college is one of tolerance, it is not necessarily the position of all individuals within the college. Furthermore, one may assume that individuals (who, being human, assume themselves correct in all instances) will try to persuade others to support their own viewpoints. There are de jure and de facto mechanisms that prevent confrontations of this sort from occurring on a large scale: the de jure endorsement of tolerance, which is in and of itself a declaration of nonconfrontation, and the de facto separation of individuals into social groups. These de facto groups generally share a closer consensus about issues like religious affiliation or sexual orientation than does the entire population—a manifestation of group habitus with common cause, largely dependent upon determining structures like class, sex, and religion (Durkheim 1895:88). This entire structure[1] stifles dialogue and avoids confrontation between groups, while keeping each party convinced of its own correctness.

            As a way of understanding the de facto separation of social groups on campus, consider what would have happened if an article of similarly controversial tone were to be published not in the Davidsonian but in a publication with a more specialized audience, such as the artsy Libertas or pedantic Davidson Reader. Ostensibly it would not have caused such a controversy; in truth, we have a real analogue with which to compare “Homosexuality against Christian tradition.” The same author published the slightly less salacious but perhaps more contentious “Call the Sabbath a Delight” in the Reader not a month before, to much less clamor amidst the student population. The difference is that the student population perceives the Davidsonian as a public space, common ground that does not belong to any one social group as might the Reader. When “Homosexuality against Christian tradition” was published, with its assertion that the author knew something that the readers did not know (an implicit condemnation of those readers), the audience felt as if their sovereignty had somehow been violated. In essence, the leap from publishing in the Reader to in the Davidsonian was the difference between claiming a relative truth—a truth-within-a-group—and an absolute Truth, and, by claiming ownership over that Truth, attempting to impose hierarchy where there was before equality[2].

            It can be seen from the paragraph above that there is a ‘normal’ structure in which groups that hold similar opinions (‘relative truths’) are nonconfrontational due to de jure and de facto social mechanisms. An assertion of truth in a public space—the pages of the Davidsonian—is an assertion of absolute Truth, and comprises an intrusion on the ‘relative truths’ held by different groups. In this case, the publicly orthodox view is tolerance, and the publicly heterodox view is private religious reservation about homosexuality (kept private largely by a cultural separation, especially among young students of vastly differing backgrounds, of the public and political from the personal and religious). The publication of the article was outside the doxa of the group not because it was religiously informed but because it was so public (Bourdieu 1977:164). It was therefore a breach from what was considered the realm of legitimate discourse. Rumors about the nature of the article preceded its publication as individuals wondered at the audacity of the author to breach such a subject, in such a way, so publicly. The flows and rhythms of normal social life were interrupted and forced a period of reaction.

            In response to this disequilibrium, several Davidson institutions took action in a way that suggests a negative feedback loop, like the homeostasis of the human body. Institutions that mobilized responses that denounced the opinions expressed in the article include Leadership Davidson (Moment of Loudness), the Chaplain’s Office (Homosexuality & Christianity), GSA (movie viewings), the faculty (resolution passed against homophobia), the Health Advisors (petition for tolerance), and the Davidsonian itself (in the form of multiple responses, including some submitted by readers). I will focus on the “Homosexuality & Christianity” gathering organized by the College Chaplain’s office.

            Interest in this meeting was widespread, and the mood in the 900 Room that night was electrifying, to the extent that several students expressed a desire for a physical altercation. This confrontation never came, and indeed this end was an aim of the meeting itself: Reverend Spach ameliorated all parties by presenting a view of Presbyterianism that did not come to the conclusions espoused by the original article. The talk, which was ritualistic and conducted in a liminal space, contributed to this sense of amelioration, which I argue is simultaneously normalizing machinery.

            The 900 Room was extremely crowded that night. The talk had the feeling of a public ritual designed to address the grievances of different parties; in this way, it functioned as a safety valve for the pressure built up in response to the article. As Chaplain, Reverend Spach offered the College’s official position on the religious question, but it was clear from the questions and statements offered by the student body that religious considerations were largely rejected in favor of secular ones. Nonetheless, the event should be considered a ritual rather than a spectacle because it was focused on efficacy (repairing the breach) rather than entertainment; because observation was not independent of action; and because individuals conveyed themselves symbolically, speaking “as a bisexual” or “as a Christian” (Beeman 1993:379).

            Liminality, to borrow from the language of Turner, is a transitional stage, in which the status of the individual is socially ambiguous (Beeman 1993:371). Reverend Spach’s instructions to those gathered are evidence of this liminal status: he implored individuals to come together as a community, to leave behind preconceptions, and to let what is said in this room not leave this room, thereby demarcating the everyday Davidson from the Davidson of that time and place. Speakers’ words literally could not be part of their everyday social identity. This allowed individuals to air concerns that would elsewhere go unspoken, and Reverend Spach emphasized many times that individuals of all opinions were to be accepted at the talk, to an overall cathartic effect.

            The entire sequence up to this point—equilibrium, publication, disequilibrium, normalization—can be understood as social drama. In Turner’s anthropology of social theater, the implicit rhetorical struggle over the truth/Truth about how the College should position itself in relation to homosexuality spilled over into an overt drama—the publication of “Homosexuality against Christian tradition.” This breach activated implicit social processes such as the polarization of opinions about homosexuality on campus, and led to manifest performances such as the liminally situated ritual led by Reverend Spach in the 900 Room, as well as other normalizing machinery. These are the mechanisms by which society “reacts against me so as to prevent my act before its accomplishment, or to nullify my violation” (Durkheim 1895:85).

            But is this normalizing machinery, in fact, repressive machinery? A number of the subsequent, student-submitted responses to the article presented alternative views beyond the ‘for’ and ‘against’ that dominated the initial stages of reaction to “Homosexuality against Christian tradition.” These include “Spangler’s article sparks important debate,” which crystallized complex attitudes towards the initial article, essentially rejecting the content of his argument while celebrating the audacity and authenticity of the author (O’Donnell 2009). This was a common position amongst the student population. This raises a further point, which I have already alluded to: is the publication of the article an insurrection of a subjugated knowledge, per Foucault’s definition?[3] Can the intolerant view of a minority in a tolerant majority at Davidson be compared to the causes that Foucault had in mind?[4] Nonetheless, throwing out the question of whether his argument is faulty or not, the heart of the original article could be seen as a “bloc of historical knowledge which [was] present but disguised…disqualified as inadequate to [its] task or insufficiently elaborated: naïve” (Foucault 203). The paradigm he advances is one whose meaning is local and specific, and he rhetorically recalls the historical high points of this paradigm; “Homosexuality in the Christian tradition” created a metanarrative, linearly connecting Jesus, John Calvin, the “staunch Calvinist” founders of Davidson, and (implicitly) the author himself (Spangler 2009).

            This may be the metanarrative of a specific individual or social group, but in a structure that rejects metanarrative, what can be the result? As we have seen in this example, the result is a failed insurrection of subjugated knowledge due to institutional inertial responses causing negative feedback and renormalization. “Power is essentially that which represses” (Foucault 1972:219), but the truth is that due to the fragmented nature of Davidson society, nearly all of the normalizing machinery did not act specifically upon any one group and was indeed in danger of ‘preaching to the choir,’ resulting in a post-breach structure that is still in conflict with itself. There is tension not only between groups (because they possess different metanarratives) but also between the specific groups and the structure itself (which are on the one hand desirous of and antithetical to hierarchy). Power exists only in action, but there are numerous institutions of formal and informal nature that act to prevent exercise of power like the failed insurrection—of course, these institutions must paradoxically themselves use power (normalizing machinery) to assure that the final social outlook is none too different from before.

            In sum, the entire social drama from beginning to end was a big deal because it was a public assertion of an absolute Truth, antithetical to the fragmented structure of Davidson society; it did not become any bigger a deal because of normalizing machinery implemented by institutions such as the Chaplain’s office; and the fact that these institutional reactions were successful speaks to the difficulty of an insurrection of subjugated knowledge in an environment like Davidson’s. The ambiguity, and the next question to ask, lies in how much of this failure is due to “forcing a group to take cognizance of its own behavior in relation to its own values” and how much is due to social inertia against insurrections of any nature (Turner 1982:92)[5].

Works Cited

Beeman, William O.

            1993.            The Anthropology of Theater and Spectacle. Annual Review of                                                 Anthropology, 1993:22:369-393.

Bourdieu, Pierre.

            1977. Structure, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power. In                                   Culture/Power/History, Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, Sherry Ortner, eds. Pp.                       155-199. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Durkheim, Émile.

            1895.   What Is a Sociological Fact? In Anthropological Theory: An Introductory                                     History, Jon McGee, Richard Warms, eds. Pp. 85-91. New York:                                                 McGraw-Hill.

Foucault, Michel.

            1977. Two Lectures. In Culture/Power/History, Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley,                                        Sherry Ortner, eds. Pp. 200-221. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

            1979. Panopticism. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, pp. 195-                                  228. New York: Vintage Books.

O’Donnell, Robert.

            2009.            Spangler’s article sparks important debate. The Davidsonian, November                                     11: Editorial.

Spangler, Michael.

            2009.            Call the Sabbath a Delight. The Davidson Reader, Fall 2009. Pp. 4-5.

            2009.            Homosexuality against Christian tradition. The Davidsonian, November 4:                         Editorial.

Turner, Victor.

            1982.            From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York:                                     Performing Arts Journal Publication.

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[1] I refer to this condition as ‘postmodern’ in that it mirrors the way in which postmodernism has a place for all perspectives, thereby marginalizing each perspective as only as good as the next, only one amidst a crowd.

[2] I will return to this point later on by questioning whether ‘equality’ in fact constitutes its own hierarchy, and whether Spangler’s articles can be considered a Foucauldian insurrection of subjugated knowledge.

[3] Alternately, can a racial minority be racist?

[4] Which, of course, includes the genealogy of alternate sexualities.

[5] In other words, if I was going to write another ten pages, it would be on the subject of whether society differentiates between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ repression.

The answer to life, the universe, and everything (according to a 16-year old me)

Hayden Higgins
November 16, 2006
42To let down one's guard is the bane of all societal existence. In practice, it is altogether too easy to deny oneself the freeing wonders of the natural world in favor of the constructed and predictable. Once upon a noontide journey, or perchance three, I myself made the perilous leap from the calculable norms of society to the untamed, unbounded natural realm.¹
Ab ovo². During my virgin voyage, I chanced upon a scraggly goosefeather, of no great importance in the general scheme of things, if you will. This feather was Only Visiting. He was Only Visiting, I came to determine, because he was a feather, and such is the nature of feathers. Even whilst bodily attached to their aviating owners, feathers are inevitably transient, even nomadic. Once separated from their brethren upon the breast of some snow-white bird, a feather becomes an animal of its own accord; they know no home- the air wrenches them from whatever scarce family and friends they may be blessed enough to possess, to undertake a hazardous new journey, each journey more trailblazing than the last. Whilst these ruminations are inscribed, I can only envision my feather arriving from- no, better, nobler: embarking upon a sojourn of the most mysterious and epic mien. God-willing my feather will arrive in good graces, and with stories enough for campfires to come.
Peradventure our own culture could adopt a mantra, to be emblazoned upon our coats-of-arms, similar to the one our favored feather holds dear: no leaf shall go unturned. The feather is unafraid of surrendering to a higher will and allowing its petty contentions to inhibit the ultimate goal. Indeed, the feather carries this slogan proudly, turning down no request for adventure, with curiosity even the cat could be jealous of. The feather is, nonetheless, governed by no plentitude of laws and restrictions; he is policed by no outside force, save the natural laws Newton held dear. His freedom is apparent, even to the casual observer: a second, minute, hour, week, month, day, year, decade, century, millennia, eon, eternity henceforth, where will our feather be? Anywhere- swimming with salmon, flying with finch, or (alack! that it should make this choice, with such wonderful options-- but to each his own) contentedly lying precisely in the same spot he occupied a second, minute, hour, week, day, month, year, decade, century, millennia, eon afore. Lo! that I have no such choice apparent before me.
Why not?
Society has long sought structure. Mayhap this is the definition of humanity. Scientists and professors, MDs and philosophers, magi and wizards have spent innumerable hours contemplating what makes us human. Self-awareness? Moral values? Look into nature. Look at her through the microscope or telescope, no matter- you will find always and everywhere the same result. Maximum entropy. Randomness, and an irrelevant, nonchalant air. Where is this entropy in humanity? Where has this nonchalance gone?
It died, along with Santa Claus, Achilles and Patroclus, Jesus Christ, the Mahatma³, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, Jim Valvano, rock and roll, innocence and Brett Slinger, in that Elysian Garden. Humanity is a self-organizing system. Everywhere we tend towards order and the predictable- what we order at Starbucks, the stock market, sports. With abstract mathematics like chaos theory, the most advanced quadrivists⁴ may with reasonable precision foresee the sales of any given product at any given time. We thrive on schedules, blame everything hectic for our woes, return to the same comforts day after day, and scorn the unknown. Is predictability beneficial? I say nay.
In William Golding's The Lord of the Flies, Ralph, always the voice of reason, declares, "The rules are the only thing we've got". Freud would be proud. We may safely venture to label Ralph the ego. We may also, with no considerable endangerment to our livelihoods, inquire as to the prevalence of the ego within our society, and the effect thereof, thereupon. The ego rules with an iron fist-- his crimes are premeditated. His is not a temper to kid with. However, the id is portrayed in The Lord of the Flies as the basest motivation-- primal instinct. Id is directly responsible for the breakdown of every notion of regulated society, as the boys descend below even Rousseau's noble savage. Freud would be proud of the guts spilled in the name of the id.
But can this id be always to blame? Our organized, neat and tidy, black and white society enters in the affirmative. However, man and his artificial nitpickings represent but one side of the Dionysian dichotomy- the yin and yang. Reason and emotion have but always been locked in a Titanomochal⁵ onslaught worthy of mention alongside Gettysburg and Troy in Valhalla. Nature always has, and always will, play the role of the compulsive id; indeed, it has instilled within us the base instinct that defines the id. The wild acts upon every fleeting whim, it matter not how ephemeral and inconsequent it may be.
The freedom to take these whims at face value, to act upon them without fear, hatred, and lust, is something Grail-like for humanity. So long we have coveted peace and order; but does reason and the ego really bring peace and order? Though narrowly averted, the Cold War stands as proof enough of the danger of the ego. The coldly calculated extermination of the Race of David in Nazi Germany and the execution of ethnic Kurds in Baath Iraq serve notice that not every crime is committed in a passion. The id is not what we seek; it is that connotated with it which we endeavor to bring home to Camelot. This connotated ideal is that each and every human should have infinite freedom, with the appropriate restrictions for protection of life, liberty, and happiness of others; no man shall turn down an offer for fear of failure. This is the bê te noire of the ego: fear of failure. That grasping for a hold on the past, in vain hope that one may rewind the videocassette of life, should be-- would be-- could be-- nevermore.
Clint Eastwood explains, with such eloquence as we may expect from a Real Tough Cookie such as himself, this feeling:

"It's like I always tell you, kid.

You gotta act when you think it's the right thing to do.

Otherwise, you feel like your gut's full of pus.

Even if you get the hell beat out of you.
If you fight, you feel okay about it." ^*

As we may expect, such a theme has been touched on before, however briefly. The ancient Romans even had a term for it (they're never short of them): carpe diem.Seize the day-- Unsurprisingly, a couple of them (Romans) even wrote about it, with Horace ^§ being the most notably attached to the idea. I think Horace and those of the Dead Poets Society would have appreciated the feather, in all its smallness and squalor. Veritably, Dirty Harry himself could identify with our fluffy feather, even empathize.
The feather knows one thing, one thing we could all learn from: the means is more important than the ends. This is lost in our culture, in which the ego urges us to achieve, reach, realize a goal, no matter the ruthless price to be paid. So many people lose themselves in the quick-hit culture we have cultivated; we grow MDs on a diet of SAT prep, flashcards, and sleep deprivation as if they are being grown on the vine by an epicurean French vintner. Lost in translation are so many of the experiences integral to true success and contentment later in life-- social skills, an understanding of failure, self-discovery, finding things out for yourself. Self-determination has gone the way of the horse-drawn wagon and cocaine in soda. Nature would have the status quo go that way, if she could.
My feather has gone on furlough. Perchance he is simply Gone Fishing, and intends to return at a later date; but the gut brusquely informs me he has given in to his nomadic ways, and I shall see him no more. Another feather now occupies his sphere; but this one is grey, grand, and plumed, not so raggedy and disheveled as my displaced friend (it does well to think that the old feather came from a young and awkward gosling, at an indecisive age, and that this new inhabitant was descended from a patriarch at the apex of his life-cycle). Perchance this extravagant visitor even kicked my wayward tenant out; do feathers have their own hierarchy of class, stratified such that higher-ups may lay claim to whatever prime land they desire to occupy that very day? After all, one never observes more than a solitary feather within a radius of five or so metres.
But frankly, this assertion is utterly ridiculous. It is conspicuous to the keen reader that it is a flawed human who allowed such a fantastic notion to cross his pitifully incompetent mind. No feather leaves under the jurisdiction of another; each is equal, each is fearless, each is. Everywhere lies a twig, a leaf, a pebble, and for what? For exploring, for learning. How many roads must a man walk down- before we can call him a man? None. The answer is not blowing in the wind⁶-- it is right here. It is there, too. He is born a man, will be raised a man, will live a man, and may he die a man, rest his soul. I think this may be the purpose of life- to chase a feather in the wind⁷, that is. We all need the freedom and confidence to be hopeless Romantics⁸ sometime or another, safety net or no. The assurance that to be caught in sweet, sublime surrender to the Almighty would not be so horrid is as natural-born as anything. It is our God-given right, should we choose to accept it.
Wherever my feather is, I hope his is a rising sun; I wish we could all take more chances.
Nature is a willing accomplice.

The following are footnotes. In the original text they appear at the foot of every page. Hence the name, 'foot'-'notes'. Notes at the foot of the page. Ingeniuos.
^{#1 Everything is relative. Oakhill Park is not Tierra del Fuego.
#2 From the beginning. Latin.
#3 Gandhi
#4 It has come to my attention that I have Shakespeared this word from thin air. It is derived from the Latin quadrivium, referring to the four upper branches of education, primarily mathematics.
#5 The never-ending war betwixt the armies of Zeus (Olympians) and Cronus (Titans)}# From White Hunter, Black Heart (1990)
# Odes, 1.11
6 Bob Dylan. Blowin' in the Wind. CBS.
7 Jones, John Paul, and Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin). All of My Love. In Through the Out Door. Swan Song, 1979.
8 Referring to the 19th century school of thought with an emphasis on Nature and emotion, NOT the popular American band of "What I Like About You" fame.

Youth In Asia

I wrote this in 11th grade. Some of it repulses me now, and some amazes me. Funny how things work out. Chinese Children It seems an irrelevant and rather quaint question as to whether it is possible to be so near to death as to crave it without being intrinsically depraved. Yet the question arises more often than any kindhearted man would like to see. Since the Quinlan debacle of 1976, an issue of common contention among Americans divided as always along racial, religious, sectional, and educational dividers has been euthanasia--the killing of a fellow human being under the assumption that it is a kinder fate than whatever death would otherwise await him. Euthanasia covers a broad range of acts, each unique. Firstly, a person can always refuse treatment, and die from whatever affliction they are suffering from, with the idea that overbearing suffering will be cease with; this is voluntary euthanasia. The next most widely accepted, though also most debated, act of euthanasia is nonvoluntary euthanasia, most recently illustrated by the Terri Schiavo case, in which a person falls into an irreversible coma, is brain-dead, and has no chance whatsoever of recovery. In this instance a proxy may ask the doctor caring for the patient to halt life-giving care in favor of restful death. This is not considered homicide in America or under most religions. Legally, terminal sedation, or in common lexicon assisted suicide, is not homicide either; it is considered homicide under most Christian denominations, and denotes a form of palliative care in which a patient near death is put into a deep (and ultimately permanent, at least 'till trumpet sound and bodies wake) sleep and treatment is stopped. Here stops currently legal forms of euthanasia; the henceforth mentioned practices are (currently) ecumenically considered cold murder, in increasing degree of perversion. Involuntary euthanasia occurs with proxy permission but against the will of the patient. Mercy killing is the termination of a fellow being without their knowledge with the presumption that their suffering will be lessened with death; it is done with good intentions but is thoroughly illegal. Finally, the most sadistic of men are so bold as to label eugenics, a euphemism for racial cleansing, as medically valid euthanasia. As much as we would like to believe it, those who fell under the Nazi spell during the darkest of German times were as human as we are. It is easy for us to believe that we could never lapse into this state of modern barbarism; yet it was even easier for those blinded by propaganda to turn their heads and write off Hitler's euthanization of hundreds of thousands of children and cripples with congenital defects in the name of medicine and morality. I fear that once the floodgates are opened, a new wave of racial cleansing and Darwinist idiocy will erupt. I fear Jack Kevorkian is the new Brandt. Kevorkian, in fact, offers us a window into all that is wrong with those who support the argument for euthanasia. A self-proclaimed "modern day John Brown", he openly proposed, essentially, a quick-fix death factory, and has personally administered the ultimate and final opiate to countless (one hundred and thirty?) restless patients. Who is to say an inconvenient grandparent couldn't be dropped off at his death factory, signed off as incompetent to make decisions on his own, and euthanized, or rather, murdered? Two cases have been brought to light which raise my skepticism as to his means and ends. One involved an ALS patient of thirty years. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a terminal disease, and is one of the most heartwrenching deaths one can imagine. Muscles turn to mush, the spinal column deteriorates, the brain loses the capacity to eat, converse, and, eventually, breathe. The cruelest part is that it never loses the capacity to think. The problem is that it is doubtful that Kevorkian, or anyone else, presented this thirty-year old patient with enough options, or even attempted to dissuade him. These sorts of patients are certainly indisposed to depression; the patient could not foresee living with a tube down his throat. Death was a welcome bedfellow to his--depraved?--mind. When Lou Gehrig was thirty years old, he already had ALS. One day, when he was in his early thirties, and in the prime of his career as a Hall of Fame baseball player, he found his muscular body incapable of opening a bottle of ketchup--roommate Bill Dickey had to do it for him. One game he slipped rounding first base--he had to crawl back to the bag to beat a throw, and couldn't get up without assistance. He won a Triple Crown, a feat accomplished five times in more than a century, and not since 1956, while his muscles were turning to slop. He died in 1941, less than two years after he stopped playing, and less than three years after diagnosis and his final All-Star season. Though he knew would certainly die within the next couple years (life expectancy at diagnosis was three years), he nobly (and perhaps in delusion) wrote in a letter to his wife that he 'might need a cane in ten or fifteen years'. For the year and a half he spent in retirement, physically wasting away, he worked invaluably as a parole commissioner for the city of New York, guiding young delinquents to a more productive life, even as his was doomed. He lived life to the fullest, down to his final month, when he became completely bedridden. In his touching impromptu farewell speech, Gehrig mentioned his 'bad break' only twice, and rather concentrated upon the things he had to be thankful for: his stout teammates, his fatherly managers, his faithful fans, his devoted parents, his unwavering wife. Should Lou Gehrig have known the full extent and horror of the disease, as we know today, one would like to say he would have reacted in the same way he did in reality--naming himself the 'luckiest man on earth', even when he had contracted a deadly disease through no fault of his own. Indeed, he was one of the unluckiest men on earth; two in every one hundred thousand Americans has the disease, and most of the cases do not turn severe until a later age than 37. He was, in short, unlucky as could be. He was also, in short, a model of nobility, courage, and all that is good with the nature of man. The question is whether Kevorkian would have assisted Gehrig to die. It may be supposed within reason that Gehrig's case was one of the majority; he should not have been given doctoral assistance, should he have expressed the wish to choose his time of dying. From Kevorkian's past exploits we may surmise that he certainly would have. In 1993 he assisted the aforementioned ALS patient, who happened to be extraordinarily young for an ALS sufferer--only thirty years of age. This occurred within half a year of an incident in which Kevorkian erased records of a man retracting his wish to die minutes before the procedure was slated to begin; the show went on, the deceased's protests unheeded (this is the second case that raises my skepticism, the first being the ALS patient). It is safe to say Jack Kevorkian, perchance the most celebrated proponent of euthanasia, would have helped kill a still-useful Lou Gehrig-- a Lou Gehrig who still loved life--if he could have found an excuse. Aristotle defined law as 'reason free from passion'. Until anyone can provide a good reason to act otherwise, Aristotle's word goes as gold-- absolutely true. As far as can be reckoned he's a tad more intelligent and level-headed and all that truck than any of us contemporary folk can lay claim to be. The essential nature of assisted suicide is such that it cannot be free from passion. Emotion, indeed, must play a large role in the act. How can it not? A life is ended forever. One cannot press rewind during one of these sorts of ventures. Veritably, the proponents of assisted suicide advance it as an act of compassion, a word that fundamentally is defined as 'suffering together'. Who suffers? One lives on, the other does not. One cannot trust doctors on the front lines to, even under codified law, act entirely objectively. One also cannot, as a human with a heart who knows himself to be susceptible to the same sorts of vulnerabilities, trust doctors to deny a suffering octogenarian his only wish (that is, his wish to die). Doctors who continually witness the inevitable carnage of the medical battlefield inevitably become depraved to a certain extent. Even acting with what they believe to be their patient's best interests in mind, problems arise. If euthanasia is to be codified passion must be first dealt with. Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece, Crime and Punishment, deals with the wretchedness of a Nihilistic young law student who murders an old pawnbroker for what he deems the benefit of the community. With cold and calculating distance, he discriminates all humanity into two groups: ordinary and extraordinary. He concludes the ordinary, the 'louses', are doomed to slave away under whatever existing rules and laws govern their land; as a general rule, they cannot conceive of anything else. However, one in many (the student Raskolnikov puts it as one in a hundred thousand) is deemed extraordinary. These Nietzschean supermen possess the capacity, even the duty to overstep boundaries: that is, to overthrow corrupt establishments in favor of whatever they fancy to be better. The problem arises, the antagonist muses, when an ordinary man becomes confused, and thinks himself extraordinary, and capable of overstepping boundaries; Raskolnikov must intermittently convince himself that he is extraordinary, a new Napoleon, as it were, rather than a common louse. The problem is in essence thus: how many ordinary louses will consider themselves Napoleonic? How many ordinary cases will be transmogrified into having an extraordinary mien? And is one in a hundred thousand enough to make up for the occasional, inevitable mistake? Right now, it is considered permissible to allow a person in a vegetative state, without any chance of resuscitation, to die, per Supreme Court ruling (see Quinlan v. State of New Jersey); this not homicide by most Christian denominations, either (or Jewish; however, it is against Islamic law). However, should we advance the limit further, it is necessary to fear that the stone will not stop rolling until it reaches the bottom of the hill. Moss will not grow fat on this rolling stone. Progress in this case will be irreversible. With every passing year the 'right' to die will be granted to a new group--there will always be those who are not satisfied. With the intention of granting permissibility to only the next rung down the ladder, we confirm the inevitability of reaching the bottom rung: involuntary euthanasia, practiced perhaps first on orphans or friendless, poor, senile or diseased old folk whom no one will miss. Eventually we will progress, or rather, should I say, regress, to the point where disabled infants are euthanized at birth, without parental consent. Nazi cleansers, under the T4 program, took disabled or malformed infants away to 'special care nurseries', where each and every one of them died of 'pneumonia'. Who knows if we will be strong enough to stand up for the sanctity of every life, when it will be so much easier, and, daresay, more beneficial, to the human race? Who can argue with the advantage we would be provided, should we eliminate, say, all carriers of the Huntington's disease gene? This sounds dangerously utilitarian, and could even be connected to some form of misconceived Utopianism. It also echoes a certain deluded Austrian. The basest instinct of humanity is the urge to procreate, and as a corollary, survive. This, in addition to the grace of God, has allowed humanity to have made it this far. And we have made it far. Why should this instinct fail us in this hour? Dying with dignity is rationally not thought of as dying at a self-appointed hour. That is simply control. Dignity is having the courage and grace to accept whatever fate the white-robed Spinners have apportioned. Dying with dignity is living, most of all living, and fighting to the very end, acting as a role model for those who will inevitably follow thou to their respective dooms. Lou Gehrig exemplified this virtue. So did Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Freddie Mercury; one gets the sense that in time Muhammad Ali will set the bar for dying with dignity as high as can be. Yet we cannot let ourselves get too comfy in the throne of high morality, lest our noses touch the sky. For every thousand cases, one is so exceedingly abnormal as to require an unconventional solution. Exceptions must always be made for the exceptional. When the rare occasion arises, it should be well within the right of an individual to request an end, should they and a capable doctor believe it right. If power over our own bodies is not within our humble grasps, what is? A man within reason and within a democracy shall always have the right to refuse treatment, should he wish to die in that way. We revere the samurai of medieval Japan. To them defeat was mental torture, torture just as horrible as any debilitating and lethal disease that can be contracted today. Their honor killings are widely considered justified. How is voluntary euthanasia any different? Should anyone lapse into a coma, should their family or guardian express with finality to expedite the unavoidable, should a qualified medical expert assert that there is no life remaining (that is, a lack of self-awareness) in a body, how can it be wrong to allow a tormented soul to rest? Ethically and morally there is no fault in allowing nature to run its course; can you kill a man in which life is absent? Yet the population, specifically the educated population, of America has decided that the rare benefits outweigh the unlikely yet ultimately inevitable risks. The purpose of a government is to implement the will of the majority and respect the will of the minority. In accordance with the public opinion following the Terri Schiavo case, those in favor of voluntary euthanasia outnumber those against. Thus it is unavoidably right that voluntary euthanasia of some sort be codified and institutionalized. Yet to avoid radicalization and degeneration one must tread softly and choose their steps with judiciousness. Nonetheless, in the interest of the commonwealth, a government cannot within its interests venture to generally approve of or condemn euthanasia. Instead it must trust the judiciary and medical branch to act with enlightened discretion and it must leave the choice ultimately in the hands of the patient. Those powers not enumerated nominally to the government are reserved by the people of the United States--the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ultimately we must trust the system of checks and balances that has given America its stability thus far to keep things within healthy moderation: a depraved patient is checked by the (hopefully) astute and discriminating doctor, who is in turn checked by the judiciary, whose power is inherently taken from the people and directly taken from the vote of the populace. The proposition is strictly thus: require living wills as part of the driver's license package--with this a good deal of avoidable legal business will, in fact, be avoided; expel from all medical profession any doctor who acts to allow a patient to die irresponsibly, that is, in a way that will cause undue pain or to allow a patient to die whose wish to die is not thoroughly justified, twice; ban assisted suicide except under stringently monitored, exactly followed procedure, perhaps requiring that the patient be in immediate danger from his illness and physical rather than emotional distress; encouragement of voluntary euthanasia, that is, refusing treatment and dying naturally, so as to avoid legal complications; and pertinaciously pursuing those who engage in unlawful versions of euthanasia, including involuntary or nonvoluntary euthanasia and mercy killings. As hard as it is to be objective when a thing as sacred as a life is at stake, it must be so, or else the whole plan falls to shambles. The dearest mantra to an American heart is that each and every citizen is guaranteed the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Is not that exceptional case where death is better than life an illustration of all three principles? Death is a part of life as integral as birth; an alpha must have an omega. Ergo the right to die is included in the right to live. Liberty is the right of choice. And is not bliss, nirvana, heaven, moksha found by the true believer in the afterlife? These certain cases where euthanasia is justified are simply and surely the choice to die in pursuit of something better; life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

A short homily on religion as it is oft practiced

There is no reason to rely on knowledge received

Nor to be by rhyme deceived

A pretty poem is not cause to believe

A creed to wear upon a sleeve

Cosmologies that are preconceived

Have oft caused many to be bereaved

So whether Atlas on his shoulder heaved

Or Fates at their lonely looms weaved

Our race, us men, shall not succeed

If we not of this rejoinder take heed

Do not solely to the religion of your father cleave

The exceptionalist argument is trite and naive

Think with a clean mind and we may achieve

A daily soft and quiet reprieve

When one can lie awake at eve

And gaze with wonder at the heavenly eave

A world without those who misperceive

A world full of those who truly believe

Kristof app essay--On travel

Dear Mr. Kristof and Associates,

            I read about the competition to spend time out on the reporting trail and it struck me as a classic example of “why not?” A unique confluence of circumstances on the global scale and an intersection of personal values makes this a golden opportunity. My reasoning is two-pronged: because the fate of the developing world may very well be the fate of humanity, and because travelling is an intrinsic good. What I mean to say is that the world and I have both arrived at a crossroads and I do not intend to wait around while it goes on its way.

            I am confident that you have come to the same conclusion—that the world is at a crossroads—or else your column would not exist. The world, by which I mean humanity, can act for the first time on a truly global scale. Globalization: my relationship with my neighbor grows ever more multidimensional due to fracture of identity between economic, religious, ethnic, and national boundaries and the increase of interdependency. Shall we choose to emphasize our differences or our common interests? My choice of words is central: it is a choice, and moreover one that shall largely be made by the people of my generation. We will have the capacity to change the world; the question is one of willpower, cooperation, and communication.

            It is unlikely that Robert Zimmerman of the Black Hills would have become Bob Dylan, generational icon, if he had not travelled to New York, the most happening place in the world. Any individual who wants to understand the human experience in the twenty-first century shall no longer be able to ignore the least-privileged. The way that China handles its newfound power—the fate of African democracies—the reliance on oil for wealth in the Middle East—these are some of the issues paramount in determining the direction of humanity. The entire developing world is the New York City of the twenty-first century.

            That is why I want to go to the developing world. But why anywhere at all? Difference exercises the self. Engulfing myself in an entirely different culture is a way to shed the ‘self’ presented at home and in doing so be forced to reassess what it is ‘I’ am or want to be. I am so willing to change because I recognize that change is a prerequisite for improvement. I liken this opportunity to Søren Kierkegaard’s idea of a leap to faith: only by exposing myself to new possibilities, with the foreknowledge that failure is possible, can I progress.

            As an anthropology major I am readily aware, furthermore, of the extent of our differences but also of the fact that we cannot escape the bonds of our shared humanity. I think of this, both our differences and our commonalities, as a blessing, and this belief underlies the entirety of my worldview. Indeed, one application of sociocultural anthropology is to reach common ground by exploring difference and its origins.

            Dylan provides rather a good metaphor for another of my reasons for curiosity in this venture. Until he began writing his own songs his potential was entirely unrealized. Today my work consists largely of academic ‘covers,’ reading the literature of the Western canon and reassessing arguments worn ragged from overuse. Until I acquire experience of my own—outside of the Western culture, and, therefore, as ‘new’ as possible—I may be resigned to playing the same old songs[1]. The human potential won’t be maximized until everyone the world over is allowed to play their own songs.

            Consider a dice on a table I am sitting at. From all I can see of it, it appears to be a rectangle with a dot in the middle, which could be interpreted as fulfilling any number of purposes. Obviously this is a very incomplete analysis—only by considering multiple perspectives can I learn the true nature of the dice. By taking a place elsewhere at the table, I approach Truth; only by disorienting myself can I hope to find my way. I am astonished by the fraction of the world yet revealed to me. I cannot wait to see what else there is to it.

Guilelessly yours,

Hayden S. Higgins

---

[1] I have never been outside the United States—Florida, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, and California.