Samain Moving Moon
Reflections after presenting Purity of Heart.
First, its origin lies as much in H. Richard Niebuhr’s essay, “Radical Monotheism and Western Culture“, as it does in Kierkegaard. Both press forward a key idea, that a center of value is critical to human flourishing, and, both, too, suggest God (Yahweh) as that center of value. With God at the center of a human life, Niebuhr the natural human tendency toward polytheism is checked at its source.
He identifies polytheism as allegiance to multiple values that compete for centrality, e.g. greed, patriotism, race, historical precedence, but that distort the human character if placed in a position like God’s. God, in other word, pushes out the hubris of race-based living, of a life focused on money and success, of a nationalist’s unhumble pride in country, of tradition’s right to determine behavior. With God in the center life focuses on love, justice and compassion, away, in other words, from the cruel lenses other god’s put on us.
Though not the same, Kierkegaard’s purity of heart aims in the same direction, putting God at the center, the relationship with God as the one thing willed, means the individual can live out of their own center rather than a socially determined one.
I think, with Niebuhr and Kierkegaard, that we have to choose with great care that value we put in the center of our lives, that one thing that we will. We can learn from them that certain choices lead to contorted lives that often wreak great harm on the individual and the culture in which they live their lives. Not hard to see the examples. Bernie Madoff. The KKK. The Tea Party. Most bankers and folks who live their lives in pursuit of money. You can add to the list with ease, I’m sure.
Where I part company with Kierkegaard and Niebuhr lies, I think, in the area first of metaphysics. I’m simply not convinced of the existence of God. Many of my friends are comfortable with a spiritual realm beyond or next to or interpenetrating this world, I’m not convinced of its existence either. So to put God or some other God-equivalent at the center of my life just makes no sense to me.
Are there, though, centers of value, the one-willed thing, that can produce eudaimonic lives? I believe there are and furthermore I believe they are multiple, not singular. Let me suggest a few: justice, compassion, love, beauty, art, children, the elderly, the mid-career adult, a healthy eco-system for human beings, even a particular place or people or culture.
Second, to the question of what if we cannot will one thing? What if we cannot have a single center of value? I believe these conditions are the norm and that the willing of one thing, for instance, is the exception. We can still hold ourselves to the goal of a single center of value, of willing one thing. Does that mean we’re bad if we don’t achieve it?
Of course not. It probably does mean though that there is an aspect of your flourishing that goes wanting because your energy and attention is diverted in multiple directions. Note that this is true even if all the multiple directions are the kind of focii referred to above.