We live in a good world, if we have the faith to see it for what it is
Unfortunately, it is a world of tragedy too, much of it human caused. I had occasion to read to some of my students from the Big B Blog of Amitabh Bachchan, the famous Bollywood actor, recording his reactions to the Mumbay terrror incident. Against media inducements to “calm people down”…he objected that he was far from calm himself, and closed the tragic day’s commentary with mention of his getting a restless sleep with a pistol under his pillow.
I don’t condemn Mr. Bachchan for packing a pistol in his pillow, or the fear and anger which motivated it. I think everybody is privy to such feelings from time to time. Furthermore I am a Second Ammendment man myself, and while not an expert on India’s equivalent thereto, fully in support of Mr. Bachchan’s right to bear, or even sleep with, arms. In fact Mr. Bachchan unwittingly revealed his trusting nature by implying that normally he goes to sleep unarmed.
Mr. Bachchan, in this regard, contrasts with Schopenhauer, who is reported to have gone to sleep every night with a pistol under his pillow. Schopenhauer was, of course, the famous 19th century philosopher of Pessimism, and his action was fully in accordance with that philosophy. It is sometimes objected that there are two kinds of pessimists, tempramental pessimists and philosophical pessimists, but I would conjecture that while not all tempramental pessimists are philosophers, any philosopher of that school would also have to be a pessimist by temperament. Schopenhauer certainly provides no indication to the contrary.
I don’t want to go into an extended discussion of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, except to note that he felt that the world, that is everything which exists, was the product of evil. In many respects Schopenhauer’s thought was the product of a sustained and merciless meditation on the facts presented throughout the 19th century by the theories of Darwin in biology and Spencer in sociology. Schopenhauer took these scientists at their word and tried to fathom what was at the root of such a world. He could only deduce a unquenchable lust for power and survival, a dark god similar in many respects to the speculations of the early Gnostics. In such a world the only hope for a rational being was escape into non-existence. An escape from evil. Schopenhauers bedtime armament doesn’t testify that he was quite ready for immediate escape, but it does testify to his belief that the world was a fundamentally malevolent place.
The orthodox churches have always opposed this kind of pessimistic Gnosticism. Today is the thrid Advent Sunday, and it has a special name: The Sunday of Joy. The Third Sunday of Advent is, in a sense, a philosophical challenge to Schopenhauer and all others who proffess that the world is fundamentally evil. This philosophy of Joy maintains that 1) the world was created as a benevolent act, as recorded in the first chapter of the book of Genesis, and 2) that in spite of human efforts to spoil this good Earth with sin, relief is on the way, or rather, it is here already.
So on the third Sunday of Advent we are asked to literally count our blessings…to say “thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you….” as many times and as deeply as our faith can sustain. Faith is the key, because if we submit the evidence of the world to no more than empirical investigation, then we will be able to muster a great deal of evidence for Schopenhauer’s philosophy…with or without something as dramatic as the terror incident in Mumbai. But for the Christian there are things which trump casual empirical investigation, the evidence of faith and the hope of the coming of Christ into human hearts. In terms of the drama of the Nativity which is played out in liturgical time, this takes the form of an expectation of the coming of the Christ child.
I noticed that in front of church today that the crech was already set up, with the exception of the infant Jesus. I have faith however that the baby will arrive sometime on or around the 25th of this month. In the mean time, the philosophy of the Sunday of Joy is a grace unto itself, and I found myself trying to reapeat “thank you, thank you, thank you…” as I walked through the charioscuro world of mixed blessings and sin. With enough faith one can not only get through the day…one may even be able to dispense with packing a pistol under one’s pillow.
Pico Ultraorientalis 