Of Myths & Men
James Lindsay's Search for Love & Meaning Without God
An important book in my life journey in the Catholic faith has been Thomas Howard's Chance or the Dance? A Critique of Modern Secularism. What follows, however, is not a review of that title but a partial explication of James Lindsay's Life in Light of Death (Pitchstone Publishing, 2016) in light of Howard's book, as I believe that Lindsay proves Howard's thesis. In Chance or the Dance, Howard states:
When, under the fluorescent glare of the laboratory lights, the old myth [that everything means everything] died and the new myth (that nothing means anything) took over, men, without realizing what they were doing, kept on behaving and speaking of their experience as though everything meant everything. That is, their new myth told them that things are impersonal and abstract. They don't mean anything; they are. The method that led to the new myth was called the scientific method. . . . [W]e modern men have accepted the sovereignty of the new myth. We bow to the edict (Science Is All) and then believe it. But, all the while, all unaware, we keep the old myth alive. (emphases in original)
Lindsay, the author of Dot Dot Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly (2013) and Everybody Is Wrong About God (2015) as well as Life in Light of Death, is a self-described post-theist who holds degrees in physics and mathematics, with a doctorate in the latter. He is a modern man whose sovereign is not God, certainly not a God who, according to the old myth, has imbued the world with meaning, which is ours to discover and in which to take delight. Rather, his sovereigns are math and science—although he might not acknowledge them as such—yet, all unaware, as is evident throughout Life in Light of Death, he keeps the old myth alive.
Glorious Correspondences
One way in which man reveals his continued belief in the old myth is by using his imagination, which Howard defines as
the image-making faculty . . . by which we organize the content of our experience into some form, and thus apprehend it as significant. . . . [As] the imagination is in the first place a synthetic faculty . . . its tendency is from the abstract toward the concrete. It takes vague or difficult or elusive things and seeks a concrete embodiment of what it wants to say about them.
Poetry and metaphor are two ways of saying something concrete about abstract things, such as when we call the lion the king of beasts. Howard notes that while
the sovereignty of the new myth ought to have slain the image-making inclination of man, since there is no reason at all to suppose, under the new, that one thing suggests another (lions suggesting kings who themselves suggest the King); no reason, that is, except fancy, for the laboratory has no equipment for chasing and tracing these orbiting and glorious correspondences in which the lion and the king appear as images . . . [we continue to] handle all the data of experience as though they were images—cases in point, that is, of each other and of the way things are.
In other words, we give credence to the old myth while cloaking ourselves in the mantle of the new myth. With Lindsay, this is most evident in how he treats the matter of death, and life in light of it.
The Real Nature of Death
There is nothing more abstract than death. By this I mean what Josef Pieper says in Death and Immortality:
[I]f we ask after the meaning of death not as scientists but "as human beings," it is not the physiological events we are interested in. These are important to medical research and, to be sure, to the individual insofar as physiology holds out the prospect of postponing the moment of death for a while. But even if the process of dying should . . . be delayed, there is ultimately no stopping it; and he who inquires into the nature of death is solely interested in what truly takes place. Obviously this "what truly takes place" is not the cessation of breathing and the heartbeat. But nobody can have any direct experience of the "real nature" of death—except, possibly, the dying person himself. And it is inherent in the nature of this experience that it is not communicable.
Lindsay would have us believe otherwise, that the real nature of death is communicable, when he makes such declarations as: "When we die, our minds end"; "Death is the termination of being"; and "Death is the beginning of the total, irrevocable, and permanent absence of experience." However, I believe Pieper is more accurate and truthful when he asks, "What in the final analysis happens when a man dies?" and replies, "The question is still without an answer." Better yet is what Howard would counter: "The sturdy insistence by some brave voices that there is nothing on that side is at best fatuous; there is absolutely no way of knowing that. What the consciousness of that person is of his own death is a sheer blank to us all, religious or nonreligious."
So while Lindsay tries to convince us that death is an explainable reality which he understands, as when he states, "That night I realized the full fact of my mortality," and when he asserts, "If you have never stared into the abyss and want to, I can tell you where it is and how to look," he tells us about death in the exact way Howard says reveals the way things really are, by his use of poetry. Even before the Table of Contents in Life in Light of Death, one finds the following lines from William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis":
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest. . . . All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. . . . each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. . . .So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm. . . .
Thou go . . . sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Why does Lindsay begin his book with this poem rather than by simply saying, "Live well because one day you, and everyone else, will die"? (Granted, this is what he tries to convey in the rest of his book, just not very coherently.) Howard's answer would be, because "poetic language tends toward the way things are, and not away from it; or at least the old myth would have had it thus." It seems that so would Lindsay.
Pets & Our Humanity
What Howard sees happening in our use of metaphor is something he calls an associative activity. As he writes, "By getting an image of what we mean from another realm of experience, we say exactly what we are trying to say. . . . This associative activity is . . . the opposite of that which is at work in the scientific method." He illustrates his point with the image of the borzoi, which he says we associate with Russian tsars, grand dukes, boar hunts, velvet, damask, and heraldry, not with Khrushchev and lounging "on the hearth rug at the deliberations of the Presidium." Howard brilliantly shows why we often search for correspondences among disparate things in order to heighten our awareness of the way things are, and why some images are more apt than others—and Lindsay, unknowingly, does just what Howard says we do under the aegis of the old myth.
Consider, for example, what Lindsay says about how we treat our pets:
We tend not to eat our pets, even when they are an animal routinely farmed for food, because we have imbued them with social meaning. These taboos are worth enforcing in all but the most extreme cases of need because they connect directly to what it means to be human.
I do not disagree with this statement, but am surprised at Lindsay's making it. First, he acknowledges the validity of and need for at least some taboos, which is odd coming from someone who associates religion primarily with superstition and mythology. If anything can be said to be associated with superstition, taboos certainly are, so why does Lindsay think they should dictate any of our actions?
And what is he trying to convey with the statement that "we have imbued [our pets] with social meaning"? To paraphrase Howard, you cannot establish a continuum between a given arrangement of hair, skin, and cartilage, how much time one has spent with certain animals and in what way, and a reason for not eating one's pets, especially since "we know from scientific research that it is only imagination that leads us to project one thing onto another."
Finally, what does Lindsay mean by saying that not eating our pets connects directly "to what it means to be human"? What mathematical formula or laboratory experiment can he cite to confirm that? If eating an animal, pet or not, can sustain one's life, why not eat it whether or not one is facing "the most extreme case of need"? Lindsay may be correct to assert that we should not do so because it has some fundamental connection to what it means to be human, but it is the old myth that better reveals to us why that is, not the new.
Freedom to Flow
So what does it mean to be human? There is no simple or comprehensive answer to this question. Both Howard and Lindsay have some things to say on the matter, but they are things that reflect the old myth rather than the new. Howard would say that to be human means to participate in the Dance, by which he means a "whole pattern" in which "we and the stars and acorns and angels" all move "solemnly and joyously in a measure, finding our true freedom in the discovery of the steps appointed to us." He believes that "the emancipation of human imagination from this old idea [being part of the Dance] . . . resulted eventually, of course, in a radical change in our whole idea of what it means to be free."
That is the irony of the situation as revealed by men like Lindsay. He wants us to be free of religion and "religiously motivated denial of biological evolution . . . impediments against certain kinds of medical research using embryonic stem cells . . . religious opposition to death with dignity [i.e., assisted suicide] . . . the perceived obscenity of pornography" and "the strong moral overtones regarding these topics," while still believing in the idea of the Dance—albeit with no religious connotations—which Lindsay identifies as "flow":
One of the core aspects of happiness investigated by positive psychologists is a state of mind that they call flow. When we feel like we are working on something that interests us, that we possess the skills to do well with, and that requires our concentration, and yet that challenges us . . . we experience flow.
This reminds me of what in athletics is referred to as "being in the zone." Howard asks, "[W]hat is the freedom of the athlete?" and answers, "His excellence is a matter of power—the power to do the thing beautifully." And how do we do anything, whether participating in the Dance, performing some athletic feat, or experiencing flow, beautifully? Howard would answer, "Your freedom in the Dance is to be able to execute your steps with power and grace, not to decide what you feel like doing."
Therein lies the contradiction and incoherency in Lindsay's thinking. One cannot both participate in the flow and simultaneously do just what one feels like doing. This leads me to the clearest evidence of how Lindsay, the mathematician, may in fact believe that everything means everything while not recognizing that he does so. The evidence comes from what he has to say about love and living life to the fullest, which is important yet sorely
deficient.
Meaningful Talk About Death
Lindsay calls his book a philosophical narrative, not a mathematical proof or scientific treatise explaining the nature of death. This reveals that the old myth is operative in his life, for philosophy is about, among other things, trying to find the meaning of life, especially in light of death. Philosophy seems to be one of the few disciplines (besides theology, poetry, and literature) that has anything meaningful to say on the subject of death. Science and medicine certainly do not, if we accept Pieper's quote above, and even less so does mathematics.
Regarding philosophy, Pieper explains in Death and Immortality that "the act of philosophizing itself seems to have first derived its full earnestness from [death], if indeed it did not receive its first impetus from it." But regarding science and math, he says that "a good deal of information highly pertinent to our knowledge of death can be read from the mere fact that men die, which everyone experiences. Quantitative data, however, do not particularly matter."
So what does matter in light of the fact that we all will one day die? I think Howard and Lindsay would agree that love is what matters, yet I believe only Howard would agree that explaining love is the province of philosophers, theologians, poets, and novelists, not scientists or mathematicians. (I am not suggesting that the former are better lovers than the latter, only that, in their strict capacity as poets, mathematicians, and so forth, the former have more to say about love than the latter.)
To illustrate this point, Lindsay says of his philosophical narrative that "its singular goal is to impress upon you . . . that you too will die and that all there is to do about it is to accept the fact of it and live as fully as possible in the meantime." Lindsay uses the expression "living fully" throughout his book, but he provides no clear, consistent, or convincing statement on what it means to live fully or why we should do so in the manner he suggests, probably because he thinks there is "little we know for certain about human flourishing," a matter about which math and science have little to say.
Howard addresses this notion when he writes, "And so there is, in our own century, the irony of an era that sees itself as having 'come of age' (a rather patronizing view of other centuries), but which is at the same time hysterically aware of the impossibility of making any affirmations whatever." He also notes, "There is no word from the universe to tell us what to do. There is no clue, by way of Scripture or analogy or visitation, to tell us what, in fact, the rules are." Lindsay confirms this when he states that his book "doesn't aim to tell you how to do anything, in fact."
Implicitly Old-Myth Statements
Lindsay also makes such vacuous statements as, "The purpose of life is to live it," and "learning to play the game well is done by playing it." That is like saying, "The purpose of mathematics is to solve math problems," or "Learning to solve math problems accurately is done by solving math problems." In order to do anything well, one must first know how to do it, and this means knowing the rules that apply. In a world of "Don't tell me what to do, or how to do it," and "Do your own thing," suggesting that there are rules to life is anathema. But, in truth, we best participate in the Dance, or flow, by knowing and following the rules and not just by doing what we feel like doing.
Nonetheless, Lindsay's book is filled with implicitly old-myth statements of faith about what a full, meaningful, and flourishing life looks like. Among many others I could cite are: "Our focus in examining death . . . should lie . . . on life, love, relationship, and happiness"; "Reflection upon such dark facets of human nature should urge us to take the human need for justice seriously and to be better people while we do it"; "Wisdom, in at least one regard, is learning to listen to the lessons kept by the remembering self"; "Contemplating the brevity of life creates gratitude"; and "the calls to generosity, kindness, and love are almost overwhelming."
I call these old-myth statements of faith because no mathematical formula can prove their veracity and no laboratory experiment can establish their validity. Nor can any formula or experiment validate their negative counterparts, such as Lindsay's statement that "self-indulgent pleasure-seeking isn't satisfying, and it often turns to regret in the end, even when it doesn't generate remorse." Absolutely nothing in the new myth can definitively make the case for a life of love, justice, wisdom, gratitude, generosity, and kindness against a life of selfish desire, consumption, and pleasure. Only the old myth can allow us to speak truly and meaningfully about love, justice, and other goods, but it is precisely this myth that Lindsay claims to reject while making use of philosophy, religion, poetry, and literature throughout his work.
Missing the Mark
Even so, Lindsay does not have much of use to say about love, for the best he has to offer us is such statements as, "When you realize that a person who is very important to you really will die, a person that you'd give almost anything for, the result is often an incredible desire to support that person's pursuit of happiness to the largest degree that doesn't dramatically diminish your own" and "[W]e cannot let the fear of this regret [for a life wasted on meaningless and selfish vanities] prevent us from living for ourselves." How lacking in any sense of real sacrificial love these statements are when compared to Jesus' "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 22:15) and Paul's "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her" (Eph. 5:25).
Thus, while I am encouraged that Lindsay even addresses the notion of love, since that is what is most noticeably absent from our modern world, he misses the mark because his notion of love is far from the agape love of Jesus Christ. I think Lindsay's thought can be characterized as schizophrenic in that, while he asserts belief in the new myth and expresses disdain for the old, he unknowingly makes use of the old myth to formulate his ideas. Upon recognizing this, we can turn the tables, so to speak, on Lindsay and others who think like him.
Lindsay believes he can reduce religious belief to a matter of psychology when he insists that religious stories of immortality are expressions of the primary need "to feel meaning in our lives and to avoid the immense psychological discomfort of gazing upon death honestly." Just as he reveals old-myth thinking throughout his book, he also—despite his bravado concerning how he has come to terms with the fact that one day he will die—reveals the same existential dread of death that he grossly and wrongly, in many cases, attributes to believers in God.
Brian Dunne is a former elementary/middle school teacher of 22 years, the first 15 in public schools, the last 7 in Catholic schools. He holds an MA in Catholic Thought and Life from St. Meinrad School of Theology, and an MA in counseling psychology from Boston College. For the past four years he has worked for a major online retailer, and he is currently working on a script for a satirical movie about science, technology, and medicine.
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