The Doctrine and Duty of Self-Examination

It's been kind of a rough couple of weeks -- so self-examination is on my mind in a really pressing way, lately. I came across this on the world wide internet -- it clarifies a lot of the stuff I've been trying to make internally consistent, vis a vis mid-19th century Dissent and under what circumstances the Evangelical "relation" (a close personal relationship with Jesus Christ) becomes a really meaningful thing.

This doesn't really cover it, but it gets at some of the main questions:

Self-examination is not calculated to quiet the conscience, to banish slavish fear, or to

remove doubts and apprehensions of our being unbelievers. When the mind is apprehensive of

divine displeasure and its consequences, we have for our relief, the testimony of God, that the

blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin. We are invited to draw near to the throne of grace for

mercy, and are assured that Christ will in no wise cast out the most vile who come to Him. If this

does not relieve us, God has provided no other ground of comfort and we ought to beware of

seeking such, either for ourselves or others. If this does not give us peace, it must be because we

believe not the record of God, because we are not willing to be indebted to free and sovereign

mercy alone. And in such a state of mind we need to be excited to fear and jealousy of ourselves,

and to be called to repentance, not to be quieted in our unbelief and rebellion

remove doubts and apprehensions about our being unbelievers. When the mind is apprehensive of divine displeasure and its consequences, we have for our relief, the testimony of God, that Christ's blood cleanseth of all sin. We are invited to draw near to the throne of grace for mercy, and are assured that Christ will in no wise cast out the most vile among us.

If this does not relieve us, God has provided no other ground of comfort and we should beware of seeking such. If this does not give us peace, it is because we do not believe the record of God, because we are not willing to be indebted to free and sovereign mercy alone. And in such a state of mind we need to be excited to fear and jealousy and be called to repentance, not quieted in our unbelief and rebellion.

The contrast, then, would be a state of predestination: the Calvinist death march presumption of Hell, where good intentions or acts are irrelevant in light of God's sovereign power. Here, it is sovereign mercy that exerts the force on personal will. What it does (I think) is remove the primary condition of doubt -- you are already guaranteed forgiveness, and so to ask for it -- or to attempt to earn it -- is an option that's already off the table.

In this case, notably, the power dynamic is still alive and well. Note the conditions on self-examination - that we are indebted, the submission to a higher will. In this case, what reinforces it is the idea of mercy -- not that you have been chosen, but that you are always already forgiven -- and that this commands a certain respect.

is not calculated to quiet the conscience, t

David Foster Wallace's essays on tennis, television, and the Illinois State Fair: I'd forgotten that yeah, these things ARE actually as weird as they first appear ("These things" - rote sporting practice, fear of tornadoes, the pressing desire to come home and watch Buffy, and the Maryland Horse Expo). Reading the State Fair essay, especially, feels like having a slightly worried voice in my head, rephrasing things I think and believe, and being substantially more panicked than I was at the time.

Less talking, more reading!

Starbucks and fencing

I'm home for the holidays, which means "going to Timonium" (i.e. getting in the car and keeping my parents company) in the daily run of grocery shopping, music lessons, and team sporting events. The weirdness escalates if you have, like me, let your driver's license expire, and so rely on your parents anyway to drive you to where you need to be. Caffeine, under these circumstances, becomes a dire necessity.

What I learned is that that for all its faults, Starbucks, like any other coffee shop, is really delightful in the evening when there's nobody there. Kind of makes you want to crack open a book, order a triple grande chai latte with whipped cream, and settle in for the night.

Post on Ivan Ilich

So I finally got around to reading "Tools for Conviviality," after a good long bout of irritability with deschooling talk on Metafilter. As expected, it's kind of awesome? In that sad, anti-climactic "the revolution didn't actually happen" kind of way. 10 second recap below!

First things first: Reading through "Tools," I'm persuaded (enthusiastically) that highly specialized tools have replaced ends with means, and that this is categorically a bad thing. Yes. Check. That it doesn't matter where the bureaucratic / administrative machine comes from -- it's a bad thing, and we should all be riding bikes!

So that's all well and good. But I'm confused about some things. Point 1: whether it's OK to buy the argument, but disagree with the methodology? The weird thing, I guess, is that it's not an economic argument -- it's the sociological side of Marx, I guess, that's being redone here? (this is where I kind of fall apart, so bear with me). Here's a quick gloss, for instance, on medical specialization as it relates to degenerating care:

Costly prevention and costly treatment became increasingly the privilege of those individuals who through previous consumption of medical services had established a claim to it. Access to specialists, prestige hospitals, and life-machines goes preferentially to those who live in large cities, where the cost of basic disease prevention is already exceptionally high. .... The higher the per capita cost of prevention, the higher became the per capita cost of treatment. The prior consumption of costly prevention and treatment establishes a claim to ever more extraordinary care.

And, later, on the Vietnam War:

Self-defeating escalation of power becomes the core-ritual practiced in highly industrialized nations. In this context, the Vietnam War is both revealing and concealing. It makes this ritual visible for the entire world in a narrow theater of war, yet it also distracts attention from the same ritual being played out in many so-called peaceful arenas. The conduct of war proves that a convival army limited to bicycle speed is served by the opponent's escalation of anonymous power.

Overgrowth, escalation, organic development. I get this, but I'm also a little confused -- it seems essentially to be an argument about overproduction, but one that substitutes a discussion of labor and production for one of organization and administration. Which...I get? Or I think I get? But I don't actually get.

In the process of trying to get it, I discovered Wikipedia's great discussion (complete with reading group!) on Ilich, deschooling, anti-credentialism here. But without the requisite crash course in Marxism, the hard economics of this are kind of lost on me. (not lost? the irony of needing the "requisite crash course") That's OK. I'm comfortable with letting this slide for the moment.

What seems a little hyperbolic, I guess, is the idea that overproduction becomes a self-perpetuating system: it begins with efficiency (better tools for more efficient work) and moves into senseless escalation (better tools create specialized roles, which require their own managed systems). Again, I think MOST of the problem here is that the economic argument is shifting into sociology -- it'd be useful, I guess, to look at how Marx, and see how the discussion of overproduction extends from that original argument. Does it matter? I don't really know.

Where this book is awesome -- and where it really delivers -- is on two points: 1) every place where Ilich compares American corporatism with the Soviet state. The point is that when you start talking about tools, rather than labor, the ideological systems become virtually interchangeable: they both tend toward administration, and will invariably substitute technology with better technology (accelerating the "ends for means" problem, regulation, and more management). 2) How angry he is -- and how angry he gets, progressively, through the course of the essay. Page 63:

In New York people with less than twelve years of schooling are treated like cripples: they tend to be unemployable, and are controlled by social workers who decide for them how to live....Ford produces cars that can only be repaired by trained mechanics. Agriculture departments turn out high-yield crops that can be used only with the assistance of farm managers who have survived an expensive school race...

Catastrophic development tends toward frustrated dissidence. That, among other things, is how we get to where we're going.

That's my summary of Ivan Ilich. Time for bed!