Delighted to say that I’m doing another guest blog today on Laurie David and Kirstin Uhrenholdt’s site The Family Dinner. I hope you come over to read it, and I hope you find yourself enjoying a fresh peach or apple at a farmers' market near you soon!
“…Joy makes you more intensely you.” Isn’t that a provocative – even beautiful - thought? It’s a line that I have not been able to get out of my head since reading it in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly. To be fair to the authors, I am taking it out of context. In the original passage, the authors are actually contrasting two different modes of spiritual engagement, bliss, which leads to disengagement from the world, and embodied joy, which leads to reengagement with it. Their premise is that a fulfilled life stems from engagement with the world, which enables us to find joy and wonder in shining things, that is, things and practices that are meaningful to us.
I’ve been meaning to write about ATS for some time as it’s a remarkable book, one that could have been custom-made for this whole enterprise of switching-on. Indeed, I first heard about it when a very well-read friend of mine, in response to my description of this research, said, “Hmm, I think you ought to read a book called All Things Shining.” The problem has been that the book is so rich, and there is so much one could say about it, that it’s been hard to know where to start. However, even as I was mulling this over, I read that ATS was getting released in paperback today, so it seemed that I just needed to get over it and say that if the topics I’ve been writing about here speak to you at all, then you should go out and buy it.
To me, ATS is a beautiful book because it rejects the sort of nihilistic arguments that say either that there is no meaning in the world at all, or that any meaning we can generate has to get there through an imposition of our own mind and will. They basically say straight up that that’s simply too hard…. We are but mortal, how can we possibly hope to rise above every situation and find in it a level of meaning that makes our life worthwhile?
Dreyfus and Kelly suggest instead that the world is already replete with meaning and that the human task is to pay close attention to the nature and substance of things, and to invest in cultivating deep insight into the things that matter to us, in order to find it. They provide some examples of this, but they also call upon readers to experiment, to see how and where they are deeply attracted to developing skilled and differentiated knowledge, because what “shines” may vary from one person to the next. “If we are to be humans beings at all, we must distinguish ourselves from others; there must be moments where we rise up out of the generic and banal and into the particular and skilfully engaged.” One way of conceptualizing this is Homer’s polytheism, in which certain gods might speak to or “call” given mortals who are especially attuned to them, but however one thinks of it, one of the beautiful sensibilities here is that one finds insight, meaning and self-knowledge through engagement, not through a sort of endless exploration of the self. This has a powerful appeal for me, and seems to be at the core of the switching-on project.
But you should just read the book. Because Dreyfus and Kelly tell their story by guiding the reader through some of the great Western classics, you get fresh insight into the works themselves as well as coming to understand how our current sensibilities evolved. It’s so easy to take our assumptions for granted; understanding where they came from helps us understand the different options lives that are really available to us, options that can help us live shining lives.
Just yesterday, my little boy, Jamie, who’s two, sank his teeth into my shoulder so deeply that he broke the skin. He didn’t do it because he was angry or mean. He did it because he got completely overwhelmed with emotion, and in that moment, all he wanted was to be connected with me. He might have a two year old’s way of showing it, but we all crave connection. We might want to be connected to each other, or to nature, or to a group or even to a belief, but we love and need to be closely attached to things. Indeed, moments of true connection can be really fun, and carry us to a switched-on high.
However, our craving for connection can also lead us into some pretty dark waters. I’m thinking in particular of the riot in Vancouver last week following the Canucks’ Stanley Cup loss. In the pages and pages of analysis that have been written since, most comments have centered on the idea that a particular element had to be responsible, such as professional anarchists, disenfranchised youths, disappointed fans, or a “bridge and tunnel” crowd looking for a thrill. I haven’t seen anyone consider the notion that people participated because they thought it was fun.
But, you know what? I bet it was. I mean, scary as hell, and morally reprehensible, but fun nonetheless. I would bet the people in the riot, or even at the periphery of it, felt truly switched-on. Certainly you can see many of the rioters smiling, and looking really rather relaxed and happy, in some of the pictures from the riot.
As it happens, when Vancouver first progressed to the Stanley Cup finals, I actually thought about going out to Vancouver to interview people and get a feel for the atmosphere. I’ve been wanting to look more deeply into a feeling known as “collective effervescence”. Collective effervescence is pretty much just what it sounds like: it’s the feeling we experience when we share a group’s collective excitement, anticipation or joy about something, especially something that’s meaningful to us.
I’ve been suspecting that collective effervescence is an important kind of fun, although it’s one that our modern society features only rarely. Where once collective effervescence would have been a normal part of a life marked by commonly shared religious beliefs, or important shared experiences (such as harvest), now it’s pretty much relegated to the sidelines, existing in smaller pockets like major sporting events. Thus, I thought that the Stanley Cup playoffs would be a great way to explore what people were feeling and the impact that it was having on them.
In the end though, my daughter’s end-of-term activities kept me at home, so I wound up watching the playoffs – and their aftermath – on TV. Like everyone else, the morning after the riot, I asked myself, “Why?” I mean, it’s awful when your own team loses (and to Boston!), but seriously, tearing up your own city hardly seems like a reasonable response.
Because I’d already been thinking about collective effervescence though, I started to wonder if the craving for that bigger sense of connection, albeit expressed in a very dark way, was really at the heart of what happened. For sure it sounds like there were some people who might just have been agitators, but there were a whole lot more who were willing to be agitated. In other words, people were willing to be swept up, to suspend their sense of right and wrong, in order to feel connected to a mass of energy and excitement. And frankly, as people, this needing to feel that connection just might be a core part of our humanity.
Which leaves me wondering how we can foster collective effervescence in ways that are healthy and positive, that attach all that energy – and through it, us – to something with meaning, so that we’re using it to build up rather than tear down. The intent isn’t to foil another Stanley Cup riot, not sure if one could, but to recognize that that riot tells us something about what we ourselves might need.
Maybe we need to bring back harvest festivals. It wouldn't necessarily stop the looters, but it might just do something wonderful for the rest of us.