Series:
Essay #6:
Synopsis:
Ends & Means
Jive Talking
My identity is a living construct made within my community; I become me when talking with you
Many times in my life people have said to me, "will you please just shut up." I admit that we moderns are addicted to words and reasons, and no, I won’t shut up. I need to talk my way to truth. Truth is underneath the words, it informs them, and I talk about it to get there. I try to find words that fit what’s true.
I ask myself, why does this feel right and that wrong, and I keep asking why until I reach the place without any more reasons or words, then I feel around for what’s there. That’ll be my highest good, the why for everything I do. I remember back in law school, I did a lot of jogging. I’d be running and I'd think, why do I do what I do? And I’d feel an answer: my life was about striving, getting to a better place. That was my highest good then, and knowing it let me focus its power. I do the same to find another person’s highest good: I follow the emotion to its source.
In Tractatus, Wittgenstein the Younger said, “The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science…” then later, his famous line, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” I humbly disagree. I talk about what allegedly can’t be talked about because it gets me and you in a conversation so that I can hear your thoughts. And it doesn’t matter that the words can’t do justice to reality or to what we know and feel. I’ve got to try, because that’s how I become me: by relating with you. When humans stop talking about what’s important to us, we stop being human.
In talking, you and I can meet together as Thou. Martin Buber said, regarding talk: “I and Thou take their stand not merely in relation, but also in the solid give-and-take of talk. The moments of relation are here…bound together by means of the element of the speech in which they are immersed.” Talking is a portal to Thou; except for marriage counseling.
Talking is communal. Even when I’m talking to myself, I’m talking as if with someone else. I once heard that all singing is communal, even when singing alone. I tried it in the shower where I really sound good, and it was true. In my heart, I was singing with and for other people who were feeling the song like I was. Here’s my point: I become me when talking with other people. My identity exists between you and me. It’s something that we work on together, in words, actions and body language. In this sense, I can’t be me without you. I become me when reflected in your eyes, when you know my name, hometown, and everything else that puts us in a common space, like job, friends, church. If I was put in solitary confinement, I wouldn’t be like Gene Wilder in Stir Crazy who came out of the hole saying, “One more day, please, just one more day! I was just beginning to get into myself.” I’d come out talking to imaginary people.
My identity, myself, is a communal project of me and the people around me. And since I’m a joint conversation between me and community, and since I’ll always be in your community, I must learn to live in the gaze of your judgment. The gaze can hurt, though, so I run from it, and for some of us, the running hardens into a way of being, which way of being becomes a (lesser) highest good. Said good is freedom from other people’s judgment.
It's easy to wall oneself off from judgment by refusing any true and meaningful communication with others. Whenever the conversation gets interesting, I can shut it down or withdraw (including when I hide behind politically correct platitudes). Or I can turn aggressively against my interlocutor. When I take this latter response, I take preemptive action against you. My goal is to do what I want, when I want, and still be free from your moral judgment, and therefore I judge you in a first strike. I act superior to you, because when I look down on you, you can’t look down on me. In intellectual circles, this means I belittle and relativize the moral standards by which you would judge me, while I hide my own moral standards behind obscurity, so you can’t do the same to me. Read Michel Foucault closely: can you feel this underneath the cloud of verbiage? I saw something similar in the modern abstract artist, Robert Irwin.
I always will fail to protect myself from your judgment, though. So long as I live with other people, I can never be free from judgment. My identity is a joint construct, so your opinion of me will define me, if only in small part. But my actions will define me in the large part, which means that there’s a better response to gaze than running from it: I can go out and meet you in honest conversation and share meaning with you. I think of my oldest daughter who is a Captain in the Marines. At first the military was hard on her because she didn’t fit in; she rejected her community’s judgment of her. But she’s grown over the years, and I’ve watched her identity change as she learns to embrace the community in whose eyes she sees herself reflected. She works hard on herself, to measure up to the standards of her community, to be a good Marine and leader. There’s nothing better than seeing your child grow into an adult whom you respect and whose company you enjoy.
Essays in this Series, Ends & Means: