The Corner I'm in: Faith as Nihilism

I recently saw that Contact was playing on AMC. AMC's programming has gone down hill. It used to be nothing but black and whites from early Hollywood. Now it's mostly westerns, with the occasional blockbuster. But I love Contact. So I set my mom's DVR to record it and today I watched it.

I love that movie. The dialogue between science and religion is something any human alive in the Western world today can empathize with. Or maybe I should just speak for myself. I was raised Catholic. I remember distinctly asking a question in third grade, and getting an answer that was vague and allusive. They (anyone who claimed to be Christian of any sort) all went on the "do not trust without investigating first" list. That was the entire adult world where I lived, and a decent chunk of my peers as well.

But as I grew older I was surprised to see that people used science, and turned to science for answers they couldn't find in religion. Myself, I resonated more with art. The ability to create something beautiful, that inspired awe, inspired someone to reflect on the meaning of their own existence, this seemed far closer to answering the questions I had about existence than Mrs. Burn's explanation of the period table of elements. ZZ Packer once wrote, "She felt God most when she was quiet, or when she wondered whether there was a God at all."

Finally, when I was free of highschool (also Catholic), I started wandering. I wasn't looking for anything, except maybe myself. Mostly I wanted to hear different perspectives. I think I was hoping I would find something that resonated with me, some people maybe, who wanted to walk that line between faith and reason, where, it seemed to me that truth was living, always elusive. I might taste it burning in my mouth while I spoke with friends in a coffee shop, but it was never something that could be written down. Almost like truth was always changing, like it evolved as we spoke about it, like the very act of describing, the very act of speaking, and of being, that somehow our existence, our movement through the world shifted it, moved it, that we were inextricably linked not just to the expression of truth but to the universe itself. Like if there was a God, it was this, it was life itself, and that our separateness was just that one entity knowing itself, and knowing separateness.
I had an experience when I was in Dusseldorf. I was walking along the river, the Rhine. It's a big river. It takes a long time to walk across the bridge, and it's got quite a current, a heavy movement to it. So I was staying in Dusseldorf, at a hostel, I was supposed to be traveling around Germany, but Germany was boring me and I had fallen in love with a Czech man in Estonia, so I had decided I would head back that way. But that's not important. That was just the story that I believed in that let me be in Dusseldorf. It was the story I told myself while the other partt of me knew that there was something else I was here for. Which I wasn't thinking about at all as I walked along the river towards the foot bridge that would take me back to my bedroom, but suddenly I felt like I was floating. Almost simultaneously I realized that it was because of the current of the river. I was matching it, almost perfectly, and as my eye caught the periferal view, my mind interpreted the experience almost as if I were floating on the water.

I don't remember the sequence of events that happened after that. What I remember is just these simple things. 1. I became aware, not visual, although that was there too, but physically aware of the boat that was chugging along upstream, against the current. It was the first time in my life that I could feel something that wasn't touching me - the water was like a conduit for my consciousness. The second time that happened it was air that was the conduit (still moist with morning dew). I started to laugh. And I, that's right, I started to laugh and I remembered that Siddhartha had said that he heard the river laughing at him. I suddenly I understood why the river laughed. It wasn't malicious, like I had originally taken it, it was laughing because of how hard we try, when there is no need. The river, as I was experiencing it, was like life, easy, flowing, uncontrollable, and we can either flow in its direction, or we can spend the energy of our existence fighting against it. But it wasn't until I was on the bridge that I saw the tapestry. It seemed to move out in every direction and everything was a part of it. There was nothing that could break free of this fabric, but it wasn't a stationary thing. I knew in every cell of my body that I was and was not at the same time. That I was utterly insignificant, and all the more precious because of it. Mostly I knew that I was held in something so much larger than myself and so much greater than I would ever be able to comprehend.

It was a beautiful experience. And it left me in a very difficult position when I came to conversations about god and about science. I certainly couldn't argue that god didn't exist. I certainly couldn't argue that god did exist. It seemed moot to me. Existence exists, I would say to people, isn't that enough for you?

And I went on encountering each situation with an understanding that the fabric of life could not be broken, and that it was infinitely more than I am. But I continued to see so much confusion and suffering in the world. I started to wonder how I could help. It seemed that there needed to be a massive shift in the fundamental values of the societies I had encountered (US, Brazilian, European, African in that order). But how could you bring about REAL social change. I said to a friend of mine once, "The only way this is ever going to change is if something inspired comes from above and wakes everyone up at exactly the same moment. If everyone just walks out of their front door one day and says, to hell with this, we're starting over." I got really discouraged.

I went back to school, invited by a friend of my to look into a small liberal arts college in Vermont, just check it out she said, I think you'll like it. I fell in love. I went to study Sociology. Then I met the Sociology professor and started to have second thoughts. I gave up on Sociology and just fell into studying the Czech Language. I had fallen in love with it the first time I had heard it, in my kitchen in Luanda. In Estonia, my Czech love had begun to teach me some things. And that's where I found Vaclav Havel. He spoke things that were true. About the political world, about science and religion, about life, about being alive, about being a human being, and about how all of those things - being a human being, being alive, being political, being scientific, being religious, were all the same thing. He navigated the world the way I navigated with the world, with an inner guide that allowed him to speak on any subject from a place of truth and honesty, and I was inspired. So I dug deeper. And I found a whole movement built on the principle of speaking honestly, of speaking the truth in the face of political power. And I dug deeper and I found Heidegger, who had delved deeper into the psyche of the individual, and described the mechanics of the They, how they make each of us inauthentic so that we will have the opportunity to become authentically ourselves. Again I dug deeper and found Patocka, who described those steps out of inauthenticity into authentic life as Care. And I told people about what I had found. And they gave me an A-. And they offered me a job. But something was broken.

Because in all that investigation, it wasn't Havel, or Heidegger, or Patocka, or truth, or poetry that I had been looking for. They were all just things that I found along the way. There was nothing that I was looking for. It was just the looking that I enjoyed. It was following one clue to the next clue. There was nothing that any of them could give me that I didn't already have. And there was nothing for me to do with what I had learned because it was my journey, it was my exploration, and it was for nothing other than itself. The fabric of existence has no destination. It was not an arrow that I saw, pointing out of me headed in one direction. It was a huge web extending in every direction, with no beginning and no end. There is no where to get to, there is just this life to experience. And knowing that, as deeply as I knew it when I finished my thesis, I suddenly couldn't participate in it anymore. And it's only gotten worse and worse. If there is nothing to find, then why look? Because the looking is the point. But if that's the case, then I've already found what I needed and there's no sense in looking.

So earlier today, while I was watching Contact, a thought ran through my mind that said, oh, maybe I could read this book, or maybe some other books by Carl Sagan. But then I saw where it would go, it would go no where, or it would go somewhere, but not where I expected, and it would surprise me, and it would enrage me and it would inspire me. But something is different. Because where as I used to take those inspirations and follow them up with enthusiasm, now, I just look at them and think, well, I could do that, but I know full well that I won't. I just don't see any point to it. If life is just about the experience, then why should I do all that work? Why should I play the game? There's no way to not play the game. There's no way out of the fabric. But for some reason, that doesn't inspire me anymore. Instead, it leaves me bored, tired, disappointed, extremely disappointed.

I feel like what you tried to tell me today is that life is shitty and it is also pleasant. Why does everyone want to change me? Why do you want to fix my inner authority? Why do you care? Why do I? It's like we've been locked into a torture chamber where we are designed to search for meaning, but never be able to find it. And there's no other option. We can either flow with the river or spend all of our energy fighting against it. I always thought humanity was stupid for the choices it made, going against the river, but now I sort of have more compassion for them. Because at some point, you just want out of the fabric. You get to see that you are miniscule. But that's all you get to see. Seeing your own pointlessness does nothing to change the pointlessness. Seeing how limited you are does nothing to change your limitations.

I don't want to investigate. There's nothing to find. There's only the investigation itself. That's all that is of value. But I can't do it, if I don't believe that there's something I'm going to find. I would never have walked along that river if I didn't think I knew why I was there, or have some idea of where I thought I was going. I have to have something to believe in. I have to have some story about why I'm doing what I'm doing, some way of convincing myself that it's worth it. and I just don't have any anymore. It's just for the experience itself. That's all that's left. But if I had known that. My experience is so painful and uncomfortable. I don't know how to justify the pain. If there's nothing that it's for, then it's just pain. for the sake of pain. for the sake of the experience of pain. if there's nothing to find, then why look?