Satanism's Ethics (Are Kind of Boring)

Today's post will be my six-hundred and sixty-sixth, according to Blogger (this may be untrue in that I think Blogger counts unpublished posts, and I have a half dozen or so unpublished posts). In light of this, I will write about Satanism.

I can't recall the first time I realized that Satanists were 1) real and 2) people, though it was probably around my fourth year of undergraduate. I recall hearing a very touching story that a human resources worker at Queen's University told to my Christian fellowship about a student who was complaining about the struggles of undergraduate university; when the student said that she thought she was losing her faith, the HR worker asked what faith that was, and the student answered, "Satanism." The HR worker then proceeded to treat her with sympathy and compassion, despite knowing that this student prescribed to a worldview deliberately built in opposition to the HR worker's own beliefs. Somehow this story went a long way to normalizing Satanism for me.

That being said, at the same time Satanism seems really weird to me, because it embraces the metaphysics it opposes; unlike atheism, its vehement rejection is a kind of affirmation in that, although it flips all of the moral values, it nonetheless maintains the cosmological beliefs. (Also, it is amply and inaccurately represented in movies, especially in the 90s and early 00s.) So when I made myself a course-reader style package of miscellaneous materials one summer, I include some readings about Satanism from a Religious Studies/Anthropology anthology I got out of the library. I thought this religion-of-conflict might have yield some interesting insights into religion and/or culture. And what I learned is this: Satanism is actually kind of boring.

I'll be more specific, because I suppose certain aspects of Satanism are not so boring, and I'm sure there are Satanisms, so maybe certain varieties of Satanism are more intellectually robust. What I find to be so boring about Satanism, as described and examined in Edward J. Moody's "Urban Witches,"  is its core ethical system. Moody writes that Satanist virtues are simultaneously defined as 1) that which Christianity considers a sin and 2) natural human motivations:

The seven deadly sins of Christian teaching--greed, pride, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and sloth--are depicted as Satanic virtues. Envy and greed are, in the Satanic theology, natural in man and the motivating forces behind ambition. Lust is necessary for the preservation of the species and not a Satanic sin. Anger is the force of self-preservation. Instead of denying natural instincts the Satanist learns to glory in them and turn them into power.¹

Because of its emphasis on desires that are "natural" to some universal "man," these Satanic ethics remind me of what I call the Polonius virtue, the idea that acting authentically (or true to yourself) is a moral good. I've never found the Polonius virtue convincing because 1) it is not something I intuitively feel, 2) I've never encountered a justification of it, let alone a persuasive one, and 3) I do not believe in a coherent or stable self to which one might be obliged (and this last one's pretty lethal to any chances I might have of adopting the Polonius virtue).

The most interesting move that the Satanists make regarding morality is linking definitions 1 and 2 and explaining why what Christians call sins are actually virtues:

Satanic novices are taught that early church fathers deliberately picked on those aspects of human desire that were most natural and made them sins, in order to use the inevitable transgressions as a means of controlling the populace, promising them salvation in returning for obedience.

Were it not for this explanation, it would seem mighty convenient that everything Christians condemn is actually praise-worthy. The explanation itself is actually a not too different from things Christopher Marlowe was (probably falsely) accused of having said in the early modern period.²

I don't know why I was expecting something more interesting than this. I guess I thought that if anyone had a really wild and unexpected morality, it would be Satanism, but it turns out that it fits right in there with genetic determinism, pop-psychoanalysis, and what Walter Truett Anderson calls neo-romanticism (think hippies and New Agers), movements with an emphasis on the interior self as the source of morality and truth. It also has some things in common with existentialism, but it reminds me more of genetic determinism and pop-psychoanalysis. I presume more conservative Christian writers would say that it's boring because everything that's not the truth limits God, Creation, and humanity, or because anything that derives morality from the self cannot be as rich as something that derives morality from an institution/tradition/wellspring of all Being. But I'm not going that route: certainly there are lots of belief systems I consider to be factual wrong but still well-worked out and internally compelling (for instance, Nietzsche's immoralism). Satanism isn't that.

I suppose it's as pertinent to ask why I think this is boring as it is to ask why it is boring. I think it's boring because it has no room for growth or improvement. It's static and non-dynamic. The Christian vision (or, anyway, my Christian vision) of ethics involves a person striving to better themselves through action; it's not just that my past actions become increasingly more ethical, but that I change as a result of my actions. That self to which Polonius ethicists would say that I am obliged is shifting; how do I authentically act out a shifting self? Or how do I act out an internally conflicted self? Satanists seem to want to locate authenticity in desires and impulses, but these are not always consistent: I have impulses of charity as much as I have impulses of greed, and what of my desires to inhibit other desires? Authenticity to a certain self seems doomed or nonsense unless that self to which I am authentic is a deliberate self, that is, the self that I want or will rather than the self that I have. This kind of authenticity is not just more interesting but also quite simply possible, which can't be said for regular-old Polonius ethicism. I think there's still a lot of debate concerning what kind of self I ought to cultivate, though. Christians are already on top of this idea, but I'm sure Satanists could construct a more intellectually rigorous ethics on this model as well (if some haven't already constructed it); in order to do so, however, they could not appeal either to a dubious historical account of Christianity or to inherent desire any more, which means that they'd have to build a whole new set of justifications for the sort of authenticity to desire that they've been espousing. (Nietzsche would likely make a decent starting point for that kind of work.)

EDIT: I'm also kind of surprised that the justification given for lust is reproduction. That sounds, well, exactly like Christian doctrine about sexual attraction: it's good if it leads to reproduction. The Satanists aren't adding the corollary (it's bad if it doesn't), but even so, this similarity is striking. In other words, if Satanists define "lust" simply as "those feelings which are necessary for reproduction," then they have a really tame idea of what lust is, and don't seem to understand how the churches are using the word.

--------------
1  Of course, since this and one other article are the sources of my understanding of Satanism, and these articles are old enough, what I'm writing here may not apply to Satanism generally, or to the Satanism of any particular individual you (reader) may know. All of what I say applies only to Satanism as I, through Moody, describe it.
2  It's actually possible that Marlowe did say a number of the things that the Baines Note accused him of saying, but at the time he did so he was a spy for the English government, acting out the role of traitor and conspirator in order to gain information. So, in a sense, the government was condemning him for doing what it was paying him for doing. Little wonder if Marlowe did become seditious.

The Problem of the Augmented Body

or, What is our body? part 3

I return to this series somewhat more hesitant about it than when I began. Much of the reason there has been such a gap between instalments is that I realized I had little to say. Or, alternately, that what I had to say was not very well considered. In my discipline, literary analysis, there is a lot of discussion of bodies; how we relate to them, how they are represented, how they interact, and what they are. So when I say that I know nothing much about them, I do so in a field in which theorizing about bodies is taken very seriously and is done a great deal. Perhaps this in part explains my trepidation to proceed.

But proceed I will, because I still feel as though I can say something that will be new at least to some people, maybe even ones that will read my blog (especially if Leah continues giving it publicity). What I can perhaps offer is a sense of how the more postmodern, English department-style of thinking about things can impact such a question. I think I’d just like to bracket this post off as somewhat provisional, subject to revision. Or, even better, maybe we should think of it as a starting point for further inquiry.

And don’t worry. I will have a lot more to say, with more confidence, later in the post, once we move away from this issue of raw bodies.

Let’s catch up on the ground we’ve covered here. In my first post I considered a very biological, organic, cellular, genetic sense of body: bodies are made of continuous living tissue, distinct from one another based on disconnect. I used a number of case studies to indicate how this conception must fail. Continuous living tissue is not sufficient to any definition of a body, and I mean this in more than one sense: that which defines one body from another is not continuous living tissue. But I have not ruled out that it might be necessary. That is, it might be one component of a more complex picture.

In my second post I considered an instrumental sense of body: my body is that which I have motor control over. I used a number of case studies to indicate that this cannot be a necessary definition of body. There are things I do not have motor control over (my teeth, my heart) which are my body. I want to clarify, though, that I do not mean to say that instrumentality is not sufficient to being part of my body: perhaps motor control over something is enough to make it my body.

It cannot be the case that continuous living tissue is necessary but not sufficient and motor control is sufficient but not necessary because there is at least one instance in which people have motor control over an object but do not have a continuous living tissue connection. That instance is possession of a prosthetic limb. (Which is the issue that sparked the whole controversy over at Unequally Yoked.)

So let’s get some examples. We have limbs which replace typical human appendages and have some motor function determined by synapses. This is a fairly commonplace example and is fairly easily conceived. While you might from the outset disagree, I think most of us could at least understand why a person with a prosthetic might consider it part of his or her body: it replaces a part of the body which is formerly there. If you replace a computer component with a new one, that new one is now part of the computer. If you replace a body component with another one, we could analogously consider it part of the body. This breaks down somewhat when you realize that prosthetics are not necessarily replacements: they are sometimes function where a person did not already have a limb or they sometimes offer functions which the “original” limb did not have. However, I think it’s a good place to start thinking about prosthetics. We could also say that the addition of a new periphery becomes part of the computer when added even if it does not replace anything that formerly existed there. If you would consider a transplanted heart as now part of the new owner’s body, I think I can expect the onus to be on you to explain how a non-organic heart would be any different. (If you wouldn’t consider the transplanted heart to be part of the new owner’s body, I would like to hear you explain why. The idea is alien to me.)

Let’s move in another direction for a moment. Let’s consider the Emotiv EPOC, a console device which allows you to play the video game simply with your mind. You wear a device on your head and, after a calibration process, it lets you move characters around on the screen with your thoughts. It does this by reading your brain waves. I must admit that I am personally less comfortable taking the characters on the screen to be part of my body. I must also admit that I would be less comfortable taking distant objects also moved only by synapse/circuitry to be part of my own body. To suggest that a remote control car is “me” because I can move it with my mind seems deeply problematic. That such a situation isn’t unimaginable given the EPOC indicates that we must take it seriously.
(And to forestall any complaints that this is not the same as a prosthetic, I’ll point out that some prosthetics operate on this technology and not through nerve-circuit interface.)

The point I see being appropriate here is that the Emotiv is not part of my body because I do not identify with it. That is, I specifically disagree with the claim that identification is not relevant to the conversation. Certainly it is not sufficient: no matter how badly I may identify with your body, that does not mean it is part of my body. But I think it is a component of what is going on. The physical attachment of a prosthetic encourages the owner to define it as part of her body; even when removed, in fact, it may still be considered part of her body due to her identification with it over time. Motor control also plays a role in this, of course; sensory feedback would play even more, and is perhaps part of why the EPOC, lacking as it does in tactile response, does not have the same identification.

But I am merely asserting that identification is relevant. I cannot, actually, back that up, but for two points which might be suggestive. The first is that many people with prosthetics say that those prosthetics are part of their body. While this doesn’t prove anything, I want to point out that we as a society have done a pretty bad job of listening seriously to minority groups. Once we do start listening, we often learn a surprising number of things from them. So maybe listening would be a good idea in this case; to simply say that they are wrong because they go against our own predetermined ideas is not a good idea politically, rhetorically, or epistemologically. The second point is also the destination of this post:

My opinion, as it stands and for whatever it’s worth, is that there is no way of determining, definitively, what a body is or who it belongs to. What we have instead are a number of competing ideas that almost work but that always, somewhere, break down. In the previous instalment I said that if we want a universal definition, it must apply to all bodies. Since I do not think we can find a definition that does apply to all bodies, then we cannot have a universal definition. I want to suggest, in fact, that we not only have no way of writing such a definition, but that the category of a discrete body might not exist outside of our idea of it anyway. There are not discrete bodies.

However, it is important that we act as if there are. (Imagine what rape would look like in a society which did not recognize discrete bodies.) But this doesn’t mean that we pick a definition of body and stick to it regardless of the consequences. Instead I suggest we ride definitions as far as they go until they break down. When they break down, we look around, see what the issue is, and draft a new definition that we can use until it stops working. What becomes crucial, then, is to listen very closely to what the people with those exceptional bodies are saying, because they’re the ones who have the best insight into what a body is in that situation. (And so I circle back to my first suggestion.)

So, to be clear: I would say that if people with prosthetics define body such that that prosthetic is part of their body, then it is part of their body. However, how we define bodies is not so simple because it must take into account the society we live in. I will address this a forthcoming section. In the meantime, I will spend a few instalments dealing with the opposite half of the dualist equation: the mind.

Series Index

The Fantasy Genre: Magic, Maps, and Mystery

"In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together; the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder."

-Huston Smith, The World's Religions.

I have a number of thoughts about the fantasy genre which I intend to explore here. (I should instead be using this time to read and think about The Loves of the Plants and The Seasons.) In this post, I will be thinking about fantasy and mystery.

Dr. Richard Beck at Experimental Theology has written a post about Harry Potter, Twilight, and modern horror and fantasy movies. Beck locates a new trend in fantasy which emphasizes the biological over the metaphysical or magical. As always you should read the whole post because any summary will by necessity fail, but the gist is that the titular examples do not so much use metaphysical versions of wizardry or vampires as their forerunners would have, but instead are interested in biology. Vampirism is less a curse than a disease; magic seems genetic and the problems of Harry's world seem racial and racist in nature, following the pseudo-scientific rhetoric we are used to in Nazism and anti-abolitionist literature. Of course, these two books are not the only ones doing this; Beck uses them as emblems of a growing trend.

I agree with Beck that this biologism is a trend, as I'd been charting (and at that time participating in) it since high school. However, I think that Harry Potty has a slight redemption to it, which is this: magic is never explained in the text. We as readers are made aware that there is a foundation to it. Hermione insists that learning the theory will help Harry improve his skill as a wizard, but we never know what that theory is. This missing piece of the picture explains how wizardry can be a skill learned and improved through practice. Otherwise it would seem awfully silly that someone could be no good at flicking their wrist and repeating pseudo-Latin. So long as you were born with magical ability, you should be able to figure out Wingardium Leviosa in minutes.

This missing foundation is not enough to rescue it from the biologism than Beck sees in it, but that's neither here nor there. It's still a perfectly good series. What interests me is how frustrated some people I know get about not knowing how magic operates. "I already suspended disbelief once," they say. "I don't want to have to do it again and again." This should not be surprising: Wikipedia offers extensive explanation of how magic in fantasy can operate. It seems natural that people who like fantasy should want to know how the magic works. People are curious, and people are increasingly interested in understanding how things work. Why should magic in fiction be any different?

To me the answer to that is simple: it would cease to be magic. If we understood magic, it would be physics; the manipulation of it would be a sufficiently advanced technology. Magic is not reducable to a sufficiently advanced technology, or at least it isn't in fiction if we happen to know how it works. That which is magical (numinous is a worth-while word to think about in this case) is to some extent or another inexplicable. I should note that this doesn't need to tax our suspension of disbelief. Most of us don't understand how airplanes stay in the air or how we get oxygen though our lungs or how the postal system works, but we go with it anyeway. There is no reason that we can't put questions of understanding aside when deciding whether or not to suspend our disbelief in fiction. (Besides, it's good for us.)

Does this mean we are wrong to want to understand? No, I do not think so. Curiousity is a good thing by most accounts. What isn't such a good thing is getting angry and putting the book down when our curiousity is not always satisfied. For one thing, it's a very childish attitude. If you are curious about a friend's private life and get indignant when they won't tell you about it, you are failing at friendship because you are failing to respect their privacy. For another thing, you would miss a lot of good fiction. And for a final thing, you will miss the pleasure of mystery.

When I read a fantasy novel that I love, I want to know more. I have scoured the Internet for details about marshwiggles, for instance. There isn't much information to be had. I loved to read the appendices to The Lord of the Rings: there is a section on the presumed origin of trolls and the troll language, and there is a section on how it came to be that Gandalf took the dwarves to Bilbo Baggins' door. There is a brief mention about why the dwarves were mainly absent from the book, and that explanation was that they were busy fighting against Sauron's goblins and dragons in the north. That's right. There's an entire military campaign, in which the villians have dragons, going on off-stage during The Lord of the Rings. This roused my curiosity. I wanted to know more.

And yet I realized that this is happened before. Once I know all that I want to know, I am not satisfied. I am disappointed. The fantasy world cannot ever live up to what I would imagine it to be. Fantasy books often have maps, so if you have one handy go and look at the map. Do you know what is going on everywhere on that map? Are there any blank spaces? I don't mean gaps in the image; I mean place names which never appear in the novel, mountains which are never described, islands which remain dark and haunted. Are there these blank spaces? I want to go to those spaces, to fill them in, but as soon as you do go there the interest in them is gone. It is only when the blank spaces remain blank that they remain interesting.

([EDIT: Reading this paranthetical again I realize that I am making too broad a gesture and too bold an assertion for my current ignorance. I won't change it but I will add that I realize there is a complex discourse about the African continent. The trick is that I don't see how I can conscientiously avoid mentioning that this sort of "mysterious geography" has had direct reprecussions on real history, and those have not been universally good. There are problems when you apply literary stuff directly to the real world.] This is directly related to colonialism: it is only because the Dark Continent is Dark that it is of interest. If you feel like you have penetrated it, that you know it, then it becomes uninteresting. And it is only when you realize that Africa is not a homogenous nation of homogenous peoples but rather a section of the world which, like every section of the world, will constantly elude complete understanding that it again becomes interesting--and worthy of respect. Of course it had always been both, but so long as we thought we knew it, we could not know that.)

I don't require that all fantasy maintains the balance between giving enough details to evoke a greater picture and never giving enough to satisfy our curiosity. I am, however, disconcerted by those who do expect complete explanations of magic in all fantasy series, since this would destroy one of the best things the fantasy genre has to offer: a mysterious cosmogeny (versus a rigourously explained cosmogeny in hard sci-fi). This is the pleasant tension, that we do want to know more about these favourite worlds but that to satisfy that desire would in the end fail to please us. It is only when we are required to wonder that it is wonderful; it is only when we can desire more than we can have that that desire is endless.

(I also think that learning to live with not understanding while maintaining the desire to understand is a habit necessary to good character, but that argument perhaps belongs elsewhere.)

"False Synecdoche"

In my discussion group I am going to do a close reading of the following poem with my students. The poem, like the readings every week, was assigned by the professor; we TAs merely teach what she decides. Of tomorrow's readings, I found this poem the most interesting, or at least the most interesting given the time restraints of 50 minutes for the close reading. I suppose I should give you all a language-alert. Anyway, without further ado, here is...

"Mary Magdalene's Left Foot"

I saw the picture in Newsweek or Time
and couldn't believe who was back in the news.
But there it sat, encased in antique gold
and pedestrian prose, apart from the rest
of her imaginably lush lost body,
which it recalls with false synecdoche.

The news is littered with the bodies of women
--whores, some--who have returned to minerals,
a pile of iron and zinc and calcium
that wouldn't even fill a shoe. We glimpse
of Mary Magdalene a golden whore
that never ached for flesh or grew hair coarse
enough to scrub mud from a traveler's foot.

But gold is meretricious flattery
for the whore who washed Christ's feet with tears,
who rubbed sweet oil into his sores, then kissed
each suppurating wound that swelled his flesh,
knowing that it was God's clear flesh beneath
its human dying. And that is more than you and I
will ever know of where we place our lips.

Andrew Hudgins, Saints and Strangers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985)

***

So, I wonder, what think you?

7 Quick Takes (56)

1. I am a student again. I have attended classes. I did some readings. This is strange, and yet not strange.

2. I am a TA. That means "Teaching Assistant," for those not-in-the-know on university lingo, and Teaching Assistants do things like lead discussion groups and mark papers. As a matter of fact, I hold the grades of 20-odd students almost entirely in my hands. I also have to create a 50-minute environment of collegial discussion about literature each week in the seminars. It was absolutely mind-shrivelling terrifying at first, but I'm already getting a feel for it. As a matter of fact I quite enjoyed the first session; some of the kids were quite willing to participate. (I say 'kids' but they're not kids; some are first years, but some already have a BA. And even the first years are at least 17. It's scary, almost, seeing these kids who are adults, or adults who are kids. And then I remember that at 23 I too am hardly an adult. Certainly in many ways I am not an adult, but in few or no ways am I still a kid.)
Take home message: I like this teaching thing, so long as it's not overly formal.

3. I have explored campus and such a little more. Did I tell you that I visited the Museum of Anthropology on Monday? I was surprised that it would be open. There was a cool documentary playing about a guy from a local Aboriginal community who was part of the totem pole tradition; he went to New Guinea and partnered up with another guy there and then brought that guy to BC, where they both carved things. The New Guinea guy's totem pole, carved in Canadian redwood, is in the MoA.
The MoA is extremely cool. I might do a post about it in the future.

4. On the note of exploring, I visited UBC's Botanical Gardens today. Those are also pretty cool. I did the canopy walkway, which was a little nerve-wracking for acrophobic me. The Asian and forest area was sublime (in the sense in which it's contrasted with the beautiful): there was such a sense of vertical space, tall and high and daunting. The other parts--the alpine garden, the Carolinian garden, the physic herbarium--were also interesting. This deserves more exploration.

5. I am getting to know people. This is a good thing. Today I also visited with someone I know from Queen's who currently lives in Vancouver.

6. I, like virtually everyone else, am watching this crazyman in Florida and his hateful book-burning. I, like virtually everyone else, am hoping he will not go through with it. And I, like at least some other people, am concerned about the radical and hateful reactions in the Middle East (the "Death to the Christians" chants come especially to mind).
There seems to be a question of whether Pastor Jones' sulphuric rhetoric is in fact built logically upon his foundational beliefs; that is, whether burning Qu'rans makes perfect sense in a Christian worldview (Leah, if you are reading this and if you believe I am misrepresenting your claim, please let me know). To me it is obvious that Pastor Jones' behaviour entirely contradicts the foundations of Christian ethics, and I am happy that Elizabeth Esther articulated this far better than I could in her recent post about American evangelicism in general and Pastor Jones in particular:

"It often seems to me that for many of these evangelicals, sending a message is more important than being the message. This is why being a Christian in America isn't so much about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked as it is about voting Republican and attending a mega-church."

I suggest you read the whole post, but the gist as it relates to the logically-consistent question is that Christianity is not supposed to be about publicity and belief-control at all, but about showing love and fighting injustice. As Pastor Jones doesn't seem to be much for either, I can't say that his actions are "really" Christian... but that's a tricky concept anyway.

7. I have borrowed The Queer God, by Marcella Althaus-Reid, from the library. Whether I finish it or not is fair speculation, but I took the first step. So far it is not an easy read. Trying to read it simultaneous to watching Battlestar Galactica cannot help. What will help is that, as a grad student, I do not need to return the book until sometime in November. I'm increasingly unsure I will be impressed. But by hook or by crook I will learn more about non-normative options in the general Christian umbrella...

Alright, all, it's time to head over to Conversion Diary, host of this carnival.

Who is the Dreamer of Dreams?

Warning: Long, philosophical post musing on the nature of the self. If this does not appeal to you, don't bother reading it.

Last night I tried writing a sonnet concerning the mysteriousness of the self. I didn't get anywhere on it.

The nature of the self (as a concept more than my own self) has been nagging at me lately. I intend to explore ideas concerning it in my Master's at UBC, if my thesis is approved. So as I've been reading this past year (and watching movies and so forth) I have been keeping an eye open for any ideas or philosophies or information regarding the nature of identity and the self. I am an amateur philosopher, and so this isn't unlike me.

One thing I've noticed, especially following my forays into postmodernism, is that our ideas about what the self is are confused, contradictory, and incomplete. I'm sure someone will want to point me to psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, but last I checked they couldn't explain consciousness and, besides, I suspect that cultural and non-material forces contribute as much as mechanical ones do. So that avenue provides only partial answers, as far as I'm concerned.

Anthropology is of little help; at least, the different cultures we can study say very different things. Confucianism sees people as nodes in relationship webs; Hinduism sees people as fragments of the divine covered and sullied by karma, attachment to this world; Buddhism sees people as non-entities whose attachments reincarnate until the people finally detach themselves. The followers of Songlines in Australia see themselves as unreal until they re-enact the behaviours of their culture heroes; Native Americans (or at least some of them) see themselves as organs of the organism that is their tribe; Pythagorians saw themselves as expressions of perfect mathematical laws. In the far reaches of any culture's mysticism you start to see similarities with other mysticisms, but at this point also we (or at least I) lose any understanding of what's going on. The insights and narratives each culture expresses might be useful clues to build our own ideas upon, but I certainly don't take any at face value.

So I don't think the problem is that we haven't been working on this issue. The problem is that there are too many solutions and no way of discerning which is correct. Or, alternately, there hasn't been sufficient attempt to synthesize the assorted solutions. Or we've been working at it in the wrong way. Or something.

Postmodernism's destructive tendencies become useful in dismantling whatever clunky precepts we had before, and some postmodernists have perhaps surprisingly offered alternatives. At the moment these alternatives seem fairly reasonable, but I must add a caveat to them. I am, after all, a Christian, and therefore an essentialist. (Or perhaps I am an essentialist and therefore a Christian?)

There are, as far as I can see, two models of the self supported by postmodernism. We can think of them as the "mask theory" and the "component theory."

1. Mask Theory

The mask theory states that we are composed of masks. In different situations we wear different masks, which is another way of saying that we play different roles. Usually we wear these different masks, or play these different roles, when around different people. A submissive intern might be an aggressive conflict-monger on the soccer field. We can be a goof at times, and at times respectable. We can be a father or a son, a mother or a wife. Different people, in different situations, have different expectations of us, and we try to live up to those expectations. This is why we (or many people) feel anxious if friends or acquaintances from different contexts meet and interact with us simultaneously: we don't know which mask to wear.

The final point in this idea is that there is either nothing beneath the mask, or nothing we can ever experience.. including the wearer. If there is a true, authentic self, it is hidden. So says this theory.

We can trace this idea back to Confuciansim and to social psychology. In fact, I think it was from social psychology that this idea was born.

2. Component Theory

I've never heard this called the Component Theory before, but I think it's an apt name. It's been refered to as the Artichoke View of the Self before, if the culinary arts help you process things. This idea holds that people are composed of different bits: desires, emotions, fears, physical sensations, memories, gaps in memories, dreams, aptitudes, beliefs, neuroses, and so forth. You can imagine these either as functions of different parts of the brain, or you can imagine these as nebulous non-material entities. Whatever. Put these all together and you get a person, a self. But none of these alone makes up the self, and you can replace all of the parts over time, like the atoms and cells in your body are replaced. There is no single lasting thing that holds it all together. There is no core. There is no dreamer; there are only dreams.

(That's why it's called the Artichoke View of the Self. If you pull off all of the surface pieces of the artichoke, there's nothing left. Except that artichokes have hearts, which seems to undermine the whole image. It's also sometimes called the Onion View of the Self, I think.)

Descartes famously said, "Cogito ergo sum," meaning, "I think, therefore I am." In experiencing thoughts, he reasoned there must be a thing that thinks. The Buddhists disagreed. (Perhaps their language allowed them to do so; Descartes was using Latin verbs, which come with subjects built in, so the process thinking requires a thinker. I know nothing about Sanskrit, so I can't say whether their language is freer to have a verb without a subect?) In experiencing thoughts, they sought that which generated these thoughts. All they found were memories and sense impressions. They found no thing, no self, which experienced them. They therefore deduced that sense impressions arise and give birth to memories and desires; memories and desires, interacting, give birth to thoughts and emotions. This is all we are, a bundle of components which come and go, without permanency.

Did you know that the word "individual" means "that which is indivisable"? In this view, the word "individual" refer to a person or self is erroneous.

As I've revealed already, this line of thinking can be traced back to Buddhism and to the cognitive and neurological sciences.

Reflections

I think these ideas are intriguing and revealing, but incomplete. I do wholeheartedly agree that we do wear masks and that not doing so is unhealthy. I also wholeheartedly agree that we are built of components: thoughts, drives, desires, fears, boundries, memories, abilities, language. But I cannot accept that this is all we are. I also can't convince you to believe me, and that's not my aim.

As it stands, then, this is my conception of the self:

There is a core self, buried deep within us somewhere. I would call it a soul. You may prefer thinking of it as a shard of Sophia or a little Buddha or an Atman or a life essence or neurological predispositions (or basic programming, if you're a Cylon). In doesn't matter. I'm talking about the indivisable element unique to each of us. (Or not unique, if you prefer.)

Around this are these self-components: thought, fears, feelings, drives, neuroses, and so on. The core self is buried beneath these.

The components shift in re-arrange in patterns. Most often they react to the situation, surfacing or burying depending on the social role the person is playing. Those components fitting to a father or son or lover rise in the times the person is called to play that role. (And, of course, some components come up when it's unfitting, too, and we feel the need to control these. This feeling may also be a self-component.) These are the masks we discussed previously; the components arrange to become masks.

But the core self is capable of exerting some influence over the whole system. Sure, the self-components are unruly and often rebel against that influence (which I think we can conveniently call willpower). This is self-control. Exerting it improperly will screw up the patterns of the system and may lead to distress; exerting it properly will allow the system to play at roles better and, even more importantly, defy those roles if morality calls for it.

And of course it may become necessary to purge certain components. That cannot be easy, and you may need to turn to outside help (medication, therapy, the Holy Spirit).

There are numerous ramifications of this theory, and I'm not done working through them yet. In particular I'm thinking about people with DID, about ethics, about dying to oneself to become a little Christ (seems to me like purging the "bad" components), about playing roles to avoid stagnation. It seems to me important to develop an idea of what the self is in order to practice self-control properly.

Caveats

But I don't want you to walk away with the impression that I am certain about this theory. I'm not at all. I suspect it's wrong, actually. It's just the best I have so far. Which means that I'd like you, if you've read this far, to tell me where you think problems may lie. Either you may have personal experiences which invalidate this, or you may have read psychological or theological treatises which dismantle it, or you may be a keen logician capable of seeing some sort of contradiction. Lay it on me. This is provisional; this is what I have so far.

Ronald Weinland

My friend in Windsor has called my attention to Ronald Weinland, a man to who my friend has turned for spiritual gui--no, I'm kidding. Mr. Weinland is among that category of people who claim to be the final prophet of God, and my friend is under the impression that he's "an egotistical pr*ck" and "full of sh*t." Mr. Weinland believes that these are the end-times, and that human self-rule will end on Pentacost 2012. Before then, the United States and then every other "Israel" (ie. Christian?) government will collapse, with the sole exception of the British monarchy. Thus he writes books and travels the world "to warn and prepare people for what lies ahead in the traumatic events that will unfold over the few remaining years of this prophetic end-time."

Yeah. OK. In general I try to be pretty open-minded, but my skepticism just cannot tolerate end-time prophecies, especially those calculated to a particular date.

The topic came up while we were watching a Discovery channel show called The Nostradamus Effect, which was discussing the prophecies of the next--and last--anti-Christ. Somehow I wasn't compelled by the evidence they presented. That is to say, I don't think these are the end-times and, if they are, I'm not going to feel all that silly about being wrong.

My friend just asked how much money he's making off of this. "Where," he just asked, "does this money go, and what does he do with it?"

Planaria

In murky ponds your flattened lengths you hide,

Your heads like tender diamonds gazing dim

'Long logs you use as cover for your slim

And soft bodies, your vision feeble-eyed.

Your race's many members creep in streams

Around this world, yet we the treading swains,

Whose errors cut upon you ample pain,

Do little know your cross-eyed, broken dreams.

Yet every brokenness will yield another

You, from your wound; each fragment blooms into

A separate self. A cloven head's now two

That share a body branching. Quarrels mother

You clones who split your lengths by pulling free;

You worms will grow through love--and injury.

Yup. Planaria are funny little critters.

This is more emphatically a draft than usual. If anyone is out there, interested in contributing, I have a question: do you prefer the fourth line as it is, or would you prefer to see it, "And soft bodies, with tiny muscles filled inside."? Further, would the twelfth line be better as it is, or rendered, "That share a branching body."? Other critiques also welcome.

I had wanted to do more with this, but I often find that sonnets hold less than I anticipate they will, so I have to make due. Perhaps I could write another planaria sonnet, one that should follow immediately after in the sequence, which discusses how sexual reproduction is more genetically beneficial than asexual reproduction... and, yet, asexual reproduction seems to directly benefit those planaria who get injured, since they reproduce their genes exactly. It might be worth another sonnet.

Actually, an aubadina might work well for this subject. Shame it's not a real tradition.

Maybe the Most Horrific Thing I Have Ever Written

or, A Sonnet

I had been wanting to write a sonnet to Forficula auricularia (a la writing a sonnet to Cepaea nemoralis, seen here), but so far I have no idea how to proceed. However, my eyes glancing across my room, I happened to see Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sitting, as of yet unread, on my desk. A perfectly ghoulish inversion of sonnet conventions stuck me, in which the speaker's beloved mistress spurns him until she is turned into the living dead, at which point she is more than interested in consummating their not-so-mutual interests. Needless to say, I succumbed. What lies (or rather limps, or shambles) before you is the unfortunate result.

***

Zealous you pursue me, who, when 'live,

Of your alluring self you cruelly starved;

My love for you unslaked, in wood I carved

Beloved name of you who'd me deprived.
I craved your blinking eyes, your sable mane,

Each limping joke and, more than all, your brain.

Must now you answer diff'rently than when

In blushing breast your heart still pump'd out life?

So far have I avoided your love-bites;

This time I will surrender you to other men,

Releasing them 'gainst Laz'rus-aping you as wife;

Except I know you'll come for me some hunted night.

So I must ask, Will I, when meeting you undead,
Still loving, die? Or yet remove your maidenhead?

***

1 point for each sonnet convention or early modern pun that you can find.

1 point for each allusion to a zombie movie/comic/video game/haiku that you can find.

5 points if you can find the sonnet's hidden name.

I am dreadfully sorry about writing this. But maybe not so sorry that I won't post it.

I promise that my next sonnet will be a serious one.

7 Quick Takes (XXVII)

1. My life is a bit of a paradox. I say that I am fascinated by different religious traditions and that I like to hear other people talk about their faith, as different as it might be from mine. But in the end I pretty much only read about other beliefs. I visited a mosque once and I talk to atheists and agnostics and secularists a fair bit, but pretty much all I ever hear from them is denial of religious tenents, rather than affirmation of something positive. I should emphasize that all I ever hear is the denial; it's more than possible that they affirm all sorts of things and I'm just not terribly good at listening. It's probably a balance of the two.

So what do I do when people of another faith come to me to talk?

On Saturday, two Jehova's Witnesses came to our door. I am used to this. One of the pair that visited this past week, named Esther, has visited about three times before. When I lived in Sebringville I would often speak with a particular woman who came to our door. It was easier then, however, because she would only come in the summer when I was happy to stand outside and talk. It is rather cold to do that here. I will do this, talk. I will generally affirm or pause to consider most of what they say. After all, their opening statements are generally not very disparate from orthodox Christian teachings and I am not very good at disagreeing with strangers, especially if I'm not forced to give a bald-faced lie. But I feel like I have some obligation to tell them that I am not going to convert. Do I say to them, "Look, I go to church. I serve at church. I'm an acolyte. If your sole object in coming here is to convert me, then you are wasting your time."? I don't really want to scare them away, though. I think I do want to talk to them about their faith, but how do I do that honestly? The answer, likely, is just that: be honest.

Esther implied she'd be by in a week, which at this point means sometime tomorrow. I could conveniently arrange to be out of the house at noon so I can have another week to consider it. I don't know.

2. Sunday, for the first time in a long time, I was in the congregation again. We are reading, in conjunction with services, The Purpose-Driven Life, by Rick Warren. I admit that I am hesitant about celebrity-preachers. They seem too glossy for me. They are also often too controverial. I did a little research on this Rick Warren guy. He doesn't seem too bad--he's no Pat Robertson, for instance--but there are still a few things I'm worried about. We all have our warts, but somehow they look worse on celebrity Christians. I fear that they do more damage than good. Of course, there are exceptions: the dead ones, like St. Paul or Martin Luther or Deitriech Bonhoeffer or C. S. Lewis have a particular limit to how damaging their warts can be, and the self-effacing every(wo)man Christians who have come to celebrity indirectly, like Jennifer Fulwiler, display their warts endearingly. But those mega-preachers... they worry me. I'm not sure how much of this hesitation comes from our secular culture and how much of it is legitimate, though.

I should say that I'm reading The Purpose-Driven Life not antagonistically, but critically. So far, I have very little to complain about, but there are a few things that I disagree with or that I think aren't quite playing fair. He's not nearly as sloppy as Dawkins in The God Delusion, but a few of Warren's logical prestidigitations are of the same category, if not caliber. For instance, quoting an atheist as saying something to the effect of, "Without God, life has no meaning," does not mean that you've established that fact beyond reproach. It means that one atheist agrees with you on this one.

3. I finished my grad school applications this week. Now I wait. I hope it all works out. My greatest fear is often that I did the paperwork wrong and that I'll ruin my future because of a technicality. According to Northrop Frye, such a concept belongs most naturally in a comedy, though these days I think you'd see it in a satire. Perhaps this is why you don't see such strong comedies any more, except in out of the way places like the Drayton Theatre stage. (Drayton has some excellent comedies, by the way.)

I don't think I'll make it to seven this week, folks.

4. I heard from an insider that UBC's MFA program has made its admissions decisions. She also told me that they are very slow in getting the word out, though, so I may not hear one way or the other for a while.

I am worried about this, to be frank. I don't feel that my portfolio is particularly strong. I may have mentioned this already. I was encouraged to not choose fiction as my top two choices, since everyone chooses those and it drastically reduces your odds of getting in. So I went Children's Lit, Fiction, and Non-Fiction, in that order. However, I have no Children's Lit material, so I had to write 15 pages from scratch. Now, in the committee's first round of admissions decisions, they only look at your first choice. If you make it through that round, they then read the rest of your portfolio, and cut more people from there. My first choice was Children's Lit, and this was also the weakest (so I think) part of my portfolio. If I made it into the second round, I think my portfolio just might be strong enough. But I'm not confident that I did get into that round. In retrospect, I ought to have gone with Fiction, Children's Lit, and Non-Fiction. That, however, is in the past.

And I think that if I don't get in, I will be more upset by the rejection than the fact that I didn't get into the program. Don't get me wrong: I want to get in. But disappointment I can handle. Rejection, though...

5. I now have time to write, and I think I'm ready to get into it. I have an idea for a novel (again), and I'm afraid it's a little too odd for your average reading audience, but it's not odd for no reason at all. I am working with a purpose, here. And certainly odder things have hit book shelves, and some of them sort of along the same lines. I wouldn't compare what I plan to write directly with Half Life by Shelley Jackson, especially not in style or tone, but I think that this book has been at the very least published is an indication that what I'm interested in writing isn't too outlandish to get on the bookshelves. I intend to be cagey and silent on what it is I'm writing, though. Don't bother asking too much.

6. I also plan to write something for NorthWord. That's not the one based in BC, with the same name; I mean the one focusing on northern Canada. It will just be a short piece, and I'll submit it and see whether they accept it. You don't get paid for submissions, I don't think, but it'll be another publication, and I want to support northern Canada literature. Contributing to NorthWord seems like a small way of doing just that.

7. This past week I read Deception Point by Dan Brown. I was disappointed with his treatment of Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic. In particular, I thought it strange that he didn't bother to mention it. NASA is gallivanting all over Ellesmere Island, making discoveries of titanic scientific importance, and then keeping them secret until they are ready to announce them, and not once does anyone mention that this is all happening on Canadian soil. Why does NASA get to lead these expeditions, and how can the US publically announce these discoveries, made within Canadian sovereignty and without Canadian knowledge, without receiving international criticism? Probably because, in the universe of Dan Brown, Canada doesn't exist except as a producer of unpatriotic beer, the Newfoundland coast, and a red-shirt geologist. (These are literally the only times the word "Canada" shows up.)

I would just put this all down to Dan Brown's repeated attempts to break for the fence dividing truth from wild fantasy, if it were not for the fact that there are unresolved sovereignty issues in the Canadian Arctic. The only differences are that, in Deception Point, there is no foreign criticism and the American institutions are more clearly in the wrong.

American readers, please inform me: what does your average US citizen think about Canadian sovereignty? Does your average US citizen think about Canadian sovereignty? Politically-aware Canadians, for the record, think about foreign countries' sovereignties all the time. (The not-so-politically-aware Canadians likely do not.)

As always, check out 7 Quick Takes' host at Conversion Diary.

7 Quick Takes (XX)

1. I'm actually writing this Thursday night. I might be too busy tomorrow night (a social outing) to do this on Friday, as is traditional.

2. Saturday was Old Fashioned Christmas. Assorted things happened. We had an ice rink and a sledding hill. There were horse rides and pony rides and sleigh rides. There was a hockey shuffle board. There was maple syrup on a stick and children's crafts. There was chilli and hot dogs and hot chocolate and hot cider. There was a silent auction and a gift shop and pointsettas. There were carolers and live entertainment and bonfires and Santa Claus and elves and Christmas decorations. I was floater, as usual. It wasn't a bad event. I stayed later then than I ever have, though. I got out at 8:00. Before I left, I was mopping floors by flashlight.

I want you to look at this photo I took. The one to the right in this paragraph. Those are carollers, yeah, and that's a dude taking pictures of them, and there are little wooden sleighs with reindeer in the background and further back there are Christmas trees with Santa's Village in front of them. But that's not really what I want you to observe. What I want you to notice is the positions of the sun. See where it sits above the horizon? See the length of the shadows? Now here's the kicker: I took this photograph at 12:00 o'clock noon. That's the highest the sun gets around here. And we're not at solstice yet.

Of course, in Inuvik the sun doesn't even raise entirely above the horizon by now.

3. I served in church on Sunday. I've already written about that, though, in this post. That also happened on Sunday. I'm sure other things did, too, but they aren't really coming to me right now. It was a bit of a disappointing weekend, given how short it was.

Writing that Advent post got me to thinking. (Any surprises?) The other day I saw on ad on Facebook exhorting me to celebrate Newtonmas on 25 December. Maybe they want to join the festive season with their own scientistic holiday (I say 'festive season' because this time of year certainly has holidays other than Christmas, and the Jewish community began to observe Hannukah more to fit into the mainstream culture, Islam has the Eid and many religions have solstice celebrations, so I think it's fair to say this is one of those times of year that are celebrated by many different cultures). I have a suspicion that they want to practice a bit of irony and try to replace Christmas' spot in the mainstream culture with their own holiday, but I know I shouldn't think that because it's uncharitable. The choice of Newton-mas over Newton Day makes me wonder, though.

Anyway, this is the second scientist-based holiday campaign I've heard of. The other is Darwin Day. It makes sense for the atheist revolutionists and secularists to try and create a seasonal cycle. Conversion Diary has written about the importance of liturgical seasons, and in my incarnation as a Religious Studies student I have come to realize that many faith traditions take seasonal cycles far more seriously than your average Christian. I like being connected to the natural, planetary cycle because it makes me feel more agricultural and less urban, which is at this point nearing hypocrisy. Regardless, I realize how important it is to be able to enact a symbolic, community narrative each year, and the cycle of fall and return is a potent one. I think it will be a difficult project for the scientistics to create such a symbolic narrative. The creation even of a narrative has proven difficult (see the failure of things like The Great Story to gain momentum), and even people like Dawkins have noted that atheist communities seem inherently prone to dissolution.

Strictly as a scholar of religion, I'd like to see how this calendar holiday deal develops for the atheist movement. Will they try to use the actual idea of calendar holidays--that is, creating an annual narrative that the whole community reenacts--or will they find that is antithetical to their whole project of atheism? And do they have the voice and numbers to make this become popular? People who are still in academia (where atheism is more influential), could you keep your ears to the ground and let me know what develops?

4. I'll never finish this post if my entries continue to be this long.

I finished reading the Lovecraft collection (Nick, if you're reading this, know that you can borrow it now). Unrelated to this, I also finished reading Isaiah. I am now in--you guessed it--Jeremiah.

Thoughts on Isaiah: at some point I need to sit down and read it in bigger chunks. Maybe chart it out. I feel like something's there, but I'm not seeing it. I'm feeling like my education in close reading, while necessary and formative, is limiting me in my ability to see the whole of things I read. I want a sense of the whole structure (an idea I got from Frye, and again there are no surprises there). I have some sense of unease concerning this book. It's my first Prophet since my months in the Wisdom books, of course, so it's been a little while since I read much about carnage and slavery, I guess. This is why I want a sense of the whole.

I started this with Lovecraft, so I guess I should say something about him. Not the best, but certainly not bad. If you have any interest in the horror genre, you ought to read him. If not, then I suppose you need not. "Facts Concering the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" remains my favourite, though "Whisperer in the Darkness" is a close second.

I have started reading Daphne de Maurier's Rebecca, and am so far enjoying it.

5. Today I received a thank-you (I won't tell from whom or for what) in the form of a $25 gift certificate for Peter Pond (a mall up here) and a space pen. It's one of those pens that can write underwater upside-down in a vacuum on a greasy surface at 100 degrees Celsius. (OK, I realize that it is impossible to be both underwater and in a vacuum or at 100 degrees Celsius and in a vacuum. You know the pen I'm discussing, though.) I also received a $2o gift certificate at Chapters-Coles-Indigo, so I have some fun lined up this weekend!

6. I had some work related things to share. I can't really remember. Let's see. It's cold. But not as cold as it usually is here this season, and it's bound to get colder. And I am now starting to think I hear people with me (usually upstairs) in empty buildings, especially when I have to go upstairs. But those weren't what I had in mind.

There's an article in the Queen's alumni magazine about female sexuality which is pretty interesting, but that's obviously not it because that has nothing to do with work.

That's it! I remember! Sorry, this is negative. OK, I shouldn't say it, because this might get back to me in a bad way. I don't think anyone at work is even aware that I blog, but it's the Internet. Who knows who's reading, right?

Notwithstanding, let me just say this: I am annoyed when educators speak in non-standard English. In particular, I am annoyed when educators speak in a regional dialect--Newfinese, say--when they are educating in a different region--northern Alberta, say. I'm worried they'll teach the kids bad habits, for one. With Newfinese, the worst will be the habit of replacing all ats with tos. ("Go and sit to your desk.") Prepositions and articles, in case you didn't know, are some of the worst for making people judge you. Not only is a person less likely to mistake a vern or noun, but we're usually more forgiving when you do, since then it seems like you're ESL. If you mistake a preposition or article, though, you just sound lazy/slangy/ignorant. This is problematic because, in English, prepositions are the hardest part of speech to learn. This is part of the reason why Chinese immigrants sometimes appear less intelligent to English-speaking Caucasians (or anyone else who thinks they're less intelligent based on language use, I suppose). It's also why it's a problem if you're teaching young kids and you use prepositions incorrectly. We don't systematically teach our children prepositions, but rather teach it through example. (Since it's almost entirely idiomatic and follows no universal pattern, it would be virtually impossible to teach by rote or rule, anyway.) So they kids might pick up the teacher's preposition use, which preposition use will be invalid in the context of all of the English-speaking world with the exception of Newfoundland and maybe Cape Breton. And since they won't be speaking in a Newfoundland accent, people won't chalk it up to coming from Newfoundland but will instead assume that the kid's just not as bright as he/she probably is.

Also, when you tell the kids to stay on the bridge and the nearest bridge is on the very busy highway, I get a little worried. I really hope that the kids know that "bridge" in Newfinese refers to a porch or deck just as much as it refers to a piece of architecture spanning a river, ravine, or road, and that therefore the teacher is telling them to stay on the deck. I don't see how they could know this, but then again I didn't see any of them headed for the highway, either.

I don't think there's anything we can do about this. I certainly don't want to discrimate against people who speak differently than me. It just seems like it's going to be a problem in the education system, as it might give kids habits which will be an unnecessary detriment to them in the future.

Educators, what do you think?

7. OK, cut to the chase, because I need to go to bed: Jon asked in a recent post about life being fulfilling. Or he discussed, more than asked. OK. I feel sometimes unfulfilled because I work for so much of my life now. For those of you still in school, I say this: be happy. School's better than the work force. At least, that's how it's been for me.

So where do I get my fulfillment? The loser answers are blogging, books, writing, and Corner Gas. The less loser answers are fortunately truer, if less frequent. Going to church is actually a big one. I know it sounds hokey, but it's true. St. Thomas' is now a big deal to me. Refer to the Advent post. And time with the dog is actually up there, too, even though she's getting smelly.

And I can't think of any more right now, other than thinking, which I try to do a lot of, and maybe playing Banagrams with the folks.

I need more 'inputs' (think Navs talk, for you Navs readers), and I really need more 'outputs'. Actually, a lot of my outputs are inputs and vice-versa. But what keeps me trucking right now really are those things I mentioned. Other than that I worry about my eyes dying on me due to the superfluity of screens, it works so far.

Simple pleasures are not for simple people; simple people need complex pleasures to keep them occupied, while complex people can deal with stangation because their own minds can turn fairly minor stimuli into fascinating phenomenon. Obviously there's really no such thing as 'simple people.' But I think there's an element of truth in what I'm saying. Look up the original meanings of extrovert and introvert in the personality theories.

Sexy Body, Disfigured Body

Aimee Mullins, who I have referenced here before, asked a question in her TED talk on her 12 pairs of (prosthetic) legs. Actually, she asked three questions. They are, "What does a beautiful woman have to look like? What is a sexy body? And interestingly, from an identity standpoint, what does it mean to have a disability?" I started to think about this over the course of about a week. Not only was I wondering about the answers to her questions, but I also had a few questions about her questions. I'll try to explore these with you here.

1. What is a sexy body? What is a disabled body?

The most obvious way to answer this question is to Google these terms. But I don't think you have to. I think you'll know what you'll find, especially in the case of the former. This won't answer our questions, though. Neither question--sexiness, disability--is easily answerable. Likely, neither is answerable at all, in the end.

First: sexiness. Or, if you prefer, beauty or physical attractiveness. (If you don't want to follow my reasoning, jump to the next bold point.) They say, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and, whatever that person who originally minted this phrase meant, it has a truth different from that most people accept. Most people think it means that everyone has their own standard of beauty, which is of course somewhat true. However, there is another interesting element to this which I think becomes more clear if I say, "Beauty is in the mind of the beholder." Beauty is not, at least as we experience it, a quality inherent in an object or person. Rather, it is an interpretation of that object or person. People have said this before of all sorts of things, such as colour, but this is really a different matter than colour. A thing, of course, is not red itself. That is a psychological interpretation of the lightwaves we receive. But all things that we experience as red do reflect that particular wavelength. They are in a sense red after all.

In other words, our brains see a person and think, based on assorted qualities our sensory receptors pick up, "That's a sexy person." (If you want to hold onto an essentialist theory of beauty, you of course can. God or Platonic principles or what ever defines universal beauty can make a thing beautiful--truly, inherently beautiful--and then allow our brains to perceive that. Or, there is such a thing as beauty, somehow, derived from something, and it is to our reproductive advantage, somehow, to be able to perceive that, and we have evolved to be able to perceive it. The relevant point is that it's still a process that goes on in our brains.) In this sense, beauty is in the eye of the beholder--but that doesn't mean it's entirely subjective. To the extent that our brains operate the same, sexiness, even though interpreted, is objective; to the extent that our brains operate differently, it is subjective. The degree of difference isn't just genetics, of course, but also individual personal experience and cultural factors (and I'd argue that culture factors are way bigger than most people think). Anyway, the upshot is, 'sexiness' is partly universal, partly cultural, and partly individual. So we can answer 'what is a sexy body' in part, but only in part.

Now, there are all sorts of theories about facial symmetry and hip-waist ratios and things. I don't want to get into those, because I think that they are no more than contributing factors. A girl whose enormous, unibrow-laden, protuding forehead is perfectly symmetrical isn't going to win any beauty pagents. Meanwhile, I wouldn't say Helena Bonham Carter is the most beautiful woman in the world, but she's made it pretty well in Hollywood. But her face isn't perfectly symmetrical. Not at all. So I think we can say these sorts of things contribute, but aren't absolute.

I think here we need to fall back on what I said before. A lot of it is cultural. We are trained to think of particular people--often whole, 'healthy,' young, thin people--as beautiful and others as not beautiful. There was a time when overweight girls were considered sexy by some (Renaissance). There was a time when husky women were desirable (frontier, pre- and revolutionary Russia). There was a time when effeminate men were considered beautiful (ancient Greece, some Renaissance). Sickly girls also had a vogue (Victorian). It is true that some people we just won't find all that attractive anyway for biological reasons. But I don't think that's the case for people without legs. So long as we aren't actively repulsed by them, there's no reason we can't find them attractive. Listen to Aimee Mullins talk--just the first few minutes--on training repulsion.

That's not a real answer, but it's all I've got for now. I'll also note that I purposely trained myself not to be repelled by people with prosthetics and people with assorted facial disfigurations, etc. As a kid, I simply couldn't deal with anyone who looked 'disfigured' or 'deformed,' as I put it.

So what is disability? You'll notice I used "disfigured" in my post title. This is to emphasis a point: disability suggests a definition which rests on whether a person can perform as well as a typical person can in those tasks deemed part of everyday life. So we have people with missing limbs or people who are shorter than usual or what have you or blind people. This definition works well if you're only thinking of amputees, but it breaks down in other areas, at least if you want to talk about attractiveness. People with albinoism are not in any way less able to perform typical tasks, but they are often considered unattractive. Conjoined twins are often less able to do particular things, but they aren't always. Sometimes the only thing they are less able to do is to be alone, and I hardly think that counts. Aimee Mullins points out that people without legs are far from less able. They have now become more able. And then blind people, one of the largest demographics of people who are part of the disability--or different ability--activism movement, are often indistinguishable from sighted people, including in the realm of attractiveness. Disability is not the issue; it's 'looking weird' that is.

What definition can we use, then? Well, one possibility is, People who are visually atypical in some significant anatomical or pigmentational way, which is distinct from race, gender, or age. Another, less politically correct but I think more to the point, definition would be, People who would fifty years ago have been in a freak show, and now would be on the TLC network.

Where am I going with this? Good question. This is where: the fundamental question is, can a person who stikes us as so visually atypical also strike us as attractive?

Of course they can. If you care to, you can find all sorts of fetish literature about amputees and conjoined twins and human-animal hybrids (not possible yet, I know, but they would fit in this class if they did exist--and they were once thought to exist) and goodness knows who else. There is fetish literature about dragons doing R-rated things with luxury vehicles, so I guess we oughtn't be surprised.

But what about a 'normal' person, who doesn't have such fetishes? Well, I hope by now the pictures I've been putting in have answered that for you. There's no reason they can't, so long as we don't allow ourselves to be repulsed by them. And those fetishes may not be so off topic. I wonder if the forbidden-ness, the taboo, even the repulsiveness itself contribute to the fetish. If you look it up, people can be attracted to some pretty repulsive things. A Freudian analyst might talk a lot about the repression of certain disallowed desires being exagerated through a fetish. My point being, we might be naturally inclined to feel that these people are attractive--that these are sexy bodies--but we think we shouldn't feel so, and are as a result confused and repulsed. Consider the on-going cultural debate about whether the Medusa was beautiful or hideous. C. S. Lewis, for instance, calls the Medusa beautiful long before Cixous does. The classical painters painted her as such. And yet she's also a figure for ugliness--and disability.

Can a disfigured body be sexy? Sure it can. But we must let it be so.

2. Who becomes sexy?

And, of course, unless we find ourselves desiring that element which is different, the body must be sexy even without the disability. By now you'll likely have noticed that most of the people I've shown on here would have been attractive without their particular difference (or not, if you don't find them attractive). A 500-pound person will likely not be considered sexy, unless obesity turns you on. That's just a fact. And if a person is just generally what we'd consider unattractive, whether for cultural or hardwired reasons, then that they have a plastic arm isn't going to make much of a difference one way or another. If they could somehow grow that arm back, it won't help.

Which begins to put stress on Aimee Mullins implication that allowing the disabled to be beautiful is a victory. It seems that it's only a victory for those who are beautiful.

And I don't think this is going to push us into saying, Well, now that the legless are beautiful, people with distortions on their faces can also be beautiful. Because, I'm sorry, but by standard societal definitions, they can't. Not yet.

[I recognize that someone will come around with the argument that, if you fall in love with someone who is unattractive because of their personality, you will begin to find them physically attractive by magic, almost. I am absolutely sure this is true. Love is magic. I think we can also agree that that is beside the point. We already said we're not talking about the subjective. We're talking about quasi-objective attractiveness, in as much as it exists.]

So, if only some disabled people get to be beautiful, why should we value it at all?

3. Why sexiness?

Two reasons.

First, that there is no reason we can't bestow a privilege on some when we are unable to give it to all. It's not fair, but it would be ridiculous not to push for empowerment when not everyone in the demographic will be able to share it. It would be like saying, Let's give women the right to an education, and then someone saying, No, you can't, because those women over there are too old to start learning new things, and those women over their are so mentally handicapped that they wouldn't benefit from that education. (They have advanced learning disabilities or something.) It makes no sense.

And sexiness can be empowering. As much as people talk about beauty being a limit for women in some fields, I'd suggest you try being really downright unattractive before saying that. If you think you aren't taken seriously when you're pretty, at least people listen to you (or pay some sort of attention to you). At least people don't openly mock you for how you look, which I've seen happen.

Second, if we see some disabled people as attractive, we might be more willing to think of them--and by extension their whole demographic--as people. That is, we might think 'disabled person' over 'disabled person.' Grammatically, that is rendered 'a person with a disability,' which is the language differently-abled activists are pushing for. Hopefully, if we see a really hot albino guy walk down the street, we're less likely to think of people with albinoism as 'freaks.'

4. Why not sexiness? (I'll tell you.)

Notwithstanding what I've said so far, I think there's still a problem a number of problems, and I'm likely missing some.

While we're busy training ourselves to think of some disabled/differently-abled/disfigured/anatomically-or-pigmentally-atypical people as attractive, we're simultaneously training ourselves to think of being attractive as an important goal. That is, we're educating ourselves in the culture that worries about how people look in the first place. We're not breaking out of the system which discriminates by appearance. And before Jon breaks in here, I'm not talking about the movies. Whether we agree with Jon or not on cinema (and if you don't know Jon or what he thinks about cinema, don't worry about it) doesn't matter: I'm talking about real life here. I think it's fair to say that while enjoying an attractive person's appearance is not culturally destructive, discriminating based on it is. So we need to be careful when worrying about who is sexy that we don't by mistake brainwash ourselves into thinking that sexiness is somehow more important than, or even worse a contributing factor in, a person's humanity and their right to respect and compassion.

I revealed a particular issue earlier indirectly. There is a sort of thin edge where people who are too attractive aren't taken seriously and people who aren't attractive enough are avoided or ridiculed. Even if you found that happy medium, it would only be successful in that context; presumably, you'd be still unable to compete with those who were 'too attractive' in the other context when it comes to romantic rivalry, etc. In the end, the only thing we can say for sure is that we don't want to be in the lowest half of the attractiveness food chain. The hope, of course, is that we can somehow get out of this scenario, but if that is possible (which you might have cause to doubt), we certainly can't do it if we're at all worried about whether we're sexy when have a disability.

And then there's the issue of encouraging lust. At this point some of my readers will likely be thinking, Uhp, he's playing the prude card again, and from those readers' perspectives that would be somewhat true. There are a number of reasons why I think encouraging lust is problematic, but since some of them are religiously derived I won't fool myself into thinking that they'll be persuasive to someone outside of that context. I want to clarify here, though, that I'm not condemning the experience of physical desire. In the right situation, physical desire is a good thing--and that's biblically supported, in case you were unaware of that. But, at least from a Christian perspective, there is a problem with putting all this focus into making yourself (as a person with an atypicality of some sort) sexy, into discerning who is and who is not sexy, into allowing/encouraging/forcing yourself to feel physical attraction toward a person with a disability; the problem is the encouragement of an over-active libido. In our culture, there's already that threat. We don't need to fan the flame. But I think you can make secular arguments against allowing ourselves to be too sexually active, having to do with destroying our relationships, driving our desires into unattainable fantasies, and hampering our abilities to be romantically and sexually loyal to our partners. I haven't developed these arguments largely because I haven't seen the need to on a personal basis. They exist, though. I've heard about them.

(And in case you're thinking that I'm thus a hypocrit for writing this at all and for putting up all these pictures selected for their ability to arouse you, I say this: you're likely right. I do hope I'm making a point in all this that transcends that, but that's not to say on some level I'm not doing this just so I can think about pretty girls. The naked vanities, and everything, right? My only answer can be, "Orges and onions.")

This, then, is the crux of the question I have about Aimee Mullins' question: If we do allow that a disabled body can be a sexy body, then we are forced with a particular dilemma, which is between choosing the short-term empowerment of sexiness at risk of keeping ourselves in a destructive and discriminatory culture, or striving for other forms of empowerment which have concerns like ability and accessibility, added perspective, inherent worth, compassion, and meaningful relationships. Do we feel that worrying about sexiness as empowerment is in the end empowering, or does it just cause more problems?

There are some further lines of inquiry which are pertinent, but not so directly related that I will give them the space here (as I've so clearly gone well beyond the reasonable length limits of a blog post). You'll notice one of my photos is of an African-American woman who has albinoism. There is no way to discuss her attractiveness without bringing up race--is she beautiful because she is 'white'? The on-line discussion about the attractiveness of the Hensel twins (a pair of dicephalic conjoined twins) has, if not been exhausted, at least been exhausting. The first picture shown on here is of a prosthetic designed to be and marketed as 'sexy.' It avoids what is apparently called 'the uncanny valley'; that is, things which are close enough to looking real to sometimes 'trick' us but not close enough to really convince us are uncanny and make us uncomfortable, and the designers tried to avoid that when making this arm. Other designers strive for something verisimilitude instead, as you can see in other images. The point, then, is that whatever we decide about the moral worth of this question, in the end we cannot stop at the general principle but must then begin to untangle it on a specific level--race, uncanniness, privacy and individuality. These questions are not inseparable.

Which would be a perfect segue into the one problem I have with the feminist movement (Jon and I have discussed this), which is that there are so many other facets to identity that to focus on gender alone for your emancipation seems like a case of poor resource management. But that is getting off-topic and must be saved for another post. This one is way too long as is, and I need to go to bed.