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Wholes in Time

Recent circumstances have caused me to write more in an attempt to make sense of the dynamics at play in my life right now. I have a tendency to wax (or wane) philosophical, which is partly habit (from writing on philosophical topics so often), but it is also partly because wisdom is grounding when times are turbid. I think it's natural to seek wisdom in our world when we feel uneasy in it. This is something we're all familiar with: "when I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom: let it be." Anyway, in trying to write about things that really matter in my life---to make sense of them through writing---it's easy to go off on wild tangents of no return. Often times I will speak in very vague terms, or repeat a lot of my own cliches like an exercise in muscle memory. It's hard to write something that says what you really mean, especially when you don't yet know what that is!

I have written numerous posts over the past couple weeks which I've banished to my drafts folder (with the exception of one I foolishly deleted trying to rename it). Part of the reason I haven't shared them is self-censorship; feeling like they are indulgent rants that don't really contribute anything of substance to geminispace. I don't know if I really belive that, but I must believe it enough to keep them non-world-readable. Another reason they remain unpublished is that, apparently, in writing them I didn't find what I thought I would. Writing them was an attempt to distill some sediments of wisdom from some samples of my life's flooded waterways, but they didn't yield any gold, you could say. But they were at least helpful in realizing that point---they helped to discern where to try next. More concretely, they helped to discover recurring themes and reflect on them more soberly.

One major theme of our turbulence lately has been the tension between wholeness and time---in particular, the various carrots-on-the-ends-of-sticks in society that disallow us to be complete just as we are in the present. In my own experience this has recently manifested in the form of pressure to somehow bracket out the rest of my life in order to magically produce a masterpiece disseration. In a recent argument with my advisor, I was "advised" to send my wife and kids to live with my in-laws so that I could focus on finishing my paper. What is most important is completing my paper, so everything else in my life must either contribute to realizing that end or it must be eliminated (or at least marginalized). As if anything could really be this simple. But this comes in all colors and flavors! I recently wrote about an anecdote that is worth sharing here.

In 2018 I took a trip back to California with my family, like we do annually, but on the way back to Korea, we stopped off to meet my sister and her family in Hawaii for a week or so. It was a very memorable trip, not only because of our little pit stop in paradise, but because it was the last time my wife and daughter ever saw my father, who quickly became ill and passed away shortly after. When I returned to Korea, I was surprised by my advisor's reaction. He was utterly furious! Partly what set him off was that I had gone during the semester. I had finished my coursework and was independently reasearching for my dissertation. This meant that we could visit home in the fall for a change. But my advisor knew beforehand that I was planning to visit home when I did. What really flamed him was the fact that we went to Hawaii too. Hawaii is a "vacation destination," and to him I had no business going on vacation while I was still ungraduated. From his point of view I was first and foremost a PhD candidate, and to visit Hawaii like I did was nothing but a flagrant dismissal of my duties and obligations. This reponse was shocking to me, especially considering the fact that my occupation as a grad student is completely voluntary!

This idea that one's work is supremely important is related to the attitude that you are not complete unless your work is. The problem is, in this ethos, you are perpetually a fragment of yourself, because there is always more to do (whether it is work or play). It is not just work, though. Why not constantly strive to become the best possible version of yourself? That sounds reasonable enough, right? But why must I always be insufficient? Why do I have to become something or someone greater than I am right now? Why do I need to be prettier, more sophistocated, more affluent? Not all acorns become oak trees, some become squirrels, and here in Korea where we eat acorns, some become humans! Of course, change is inevitable and growth is desirable, but this does not mean we are perpetually broken or incomplete and therefore morally obligated to strive for perfection (or anything like it). Indeed, growth implies an adjustment of the whole situation, not just the expansion of one or few of its parts. It is a qualitative transformation, not a quantitative increase. But when we are subordinated to eventual and desired outcomes, everything becomes quantifiable at least in terms of the degree in which it contributes to the achievement that is anticipated. The result is a virtual suspension in time and the supression of individual interest (which is a condition for human growth).

What is especially dangerous about this mindset is that it's not only operational when you have a definite plan or goal---it is a generic attitude of a pervasive ethos. This makes it hard to detect how that prejudice predisposes us to our own misery. Everything is a preparation for what comes next, an effort to secure more fulfilling gains. You have to at least try---not making an effort is utterly nonsensical in that ethos. We resign ourselves to living on someone or somewhere else's time, habitually defining ourselves in terms of our perceived deficits and advantages in attaining ends that are remote to our immediate situation. Of course, it is true that life is always a work-in-progress, but there is an important difference between work and labor, or between growth and fulfilling a mechanical functioning. In labor, the individual's work serves as a means for fulfiling the ends of a larger mechanical process of which it is a function. The ends of labor are external and remote to the activity and the individual's interest in it. Work on the other hand, like play, entails an integration of ends and means in the activity at hand. That is, the ends and means are phases of that activity as it is guided and developed through the realization of the individual's interest in it. Consider the difference between a craftsman and a technician. A craftsman's work is open-ended, involving an appreciation of the possibilities entailed in the materials as they are situated by her interest. By contrast, a technician uses a given toolset to address a given set of problems to achieve a given range of desired results. What his activity involves is more-or-less defined outside of the activity itself. Growth does not occur automatically, and it does not result from rote performance of routines. Growth is itself the realization of individual interest in concrete experiences.

What is meant by "individuality" here is not personality, or personal taste or expression per se, although it may include these. Individuality is, in a sense, existence itself---to exist is to be individual as a unique concurrence and consummation of events in time and space. This is not to say that to be an individual is to exist as a self-sufficient or atomistic monad; quite the opposite, in fact. Individuals emerge through a complex matrix of organic transactions in and of their worlds. Individuality expresses the unique quality which integrates those transactions across vast stretches of time and space as the whole "thing" which emerges through them. Thomas Alexander illustrates this point well:

For the sake of pointing out, we "define" the cougar or mountain lion by its visible shape; but any biologist knows that the animal inhales, excretes, establishes territory, catches prey, mates, and occupies a position in the ecology of its environment. The term "cougar" simply signifies an organized intergration of complex relationships, activities, and events which incorporate a whole transactional field. To understand the couger is to understand it transactionally rather than simply as an individual thing which one can point at in a zoo.[†]

There is much to be said about individuality and time, but what I'd like to emphasize here is that individuality, as I have briefly described it, is not an immutable, given reality. It is entirely possible to be unaware of the ways one is organically involved with his environment as it extends in time and space. Contrary to the familiar tropes we rehearse in democratic societies, freedom and individuality are not given, original states to be recovered---they are not "self-evident" truths. They are more accurately arts to be cultivated and enjoyed. When we subordinate our interest to some remote ends, be it a vague desire to achieve "the good life," or enslavement to our own depreciated self-image and perceived deficiencies, we superimpose a simplified scheme over the top of the real conditions of our immediate experience and situation, which ultimately obscures our individuality and jeopardizes its realization and expression.

It's no surprise, then, that dualisms such as society-individual or culture-nature have persisted through the ages. Society is inherently conservative, concerned with maintaining equillibrium above all. It does not "care" about individuals apart from how they contribute to its perpetuation. This is not an off-hand cynical remark. Individuality is not simply antithetical to society (as traditional dualism would have it), but rather it is unavailable to society in a form it can "use." Individuality is radically situated and therefore irreducibly qualitative. Society can only grasp an individual in her relation to other individuals, or in a direct and immediate expression of her individuality. Society has no privileged access to or control over the unique qualities of the individuals which constitute it. In fact, the artful expression of individuality is itself a realization of social reconstruction or transformation---at least in idea. There is a funny paradox here. On the one hand, "society" would benefit from the actualization of individual interest and potential (indeed, THIS is democracy), yet society as we have it also benefits from the status quo, which in the context of individuality amounts to systematically distracting individuals from the reality of time.

Society achieves this through various mechanisms of social pressue, including various carrots-on-the-ends-of-sticks. The important thing to note, however, is this is not some gradiose masterplan "they" are executing. We internalize the conditions of our own subordination. We WANT those carrots, and we want others to want them too. We pressure ourselves and our peers to behave according to some vague and remote values normalized by our society's ethos of objectification.

Lately we have been making a conscious effort to resist those pressures and even subvert them by actively seeking out alternatives. It is not easy to do. When you swim against the current, you feel its force even more. It's easy to submit to it for this reason. But I'm trying to remain courageous in spite of how rough the water gets. One "source" of courage comes in the form of aesthetic encounters with the world which remind me that I am already whole and not beholden to the expectations of others. The other day it was cool enough to wear my favorite flannel shirt again, and the atmosphere of that crisp morning reminded me of so many previous autumns and the ways I was in them. It felt nice to feel connected to those times and places and people of seasons passed. But what made the experience especially grounding was that I had been so neglectful of such simple joys in life, even those as available as the seasons. I had internalized an unhealthy mindest that disallowed me to take time to stop and smell the roses. To allow myself to simply enjoy something for no reason other than itself was empowering. I felt whole, like I was primarily me, a whole individual with hopes, dreams, and fears. It made me realize how serverly I had been hobbled by the phantoms of social pressure, and how the antidote is readily available at all times in the raw stuff of ordinary, immediate experience.

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[†]: Thomas M. Alexander. (1987) John Dewey's Theory of Art, Experience, and Nature: The Horizons of Feeling, Albany: State University of New York Press

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