Catholic and Enjoying It!
The 19th century is not dead. There still walk and breathe among us people who seriously believe that their pet theory can “explain” love, empathy, friendship, honor, and all the other mysteries of human existence that have have puzzled the greatest sages since the dawn of time. They’ve got it all figured out. It all reminds me of this great scene from Dead Poet’s Society:
Keating sits at his desk at the front of the classroom and opens up one
of his books.
KEATING
Gentlemen, open your text to page
twenty-one of the introduction. Mr.
Perry, will you read the opening
paragraph of the preface, entitled
“Understanding Poetry”?
NEIL
Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans
Pritchard, Ph.D. To fully understand
poetry, we must first be fluent with
its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech.
Then ask two questions: One, how artfully
has the objective of the poem been
rendered, and two, how important is that
objective. Question one rates the poem’s
perfection, question two rates its
importance. And once these questions have
been answered, determining a poem’s
greatness becomes a relatively simple
matter.
Keating gets up from his desk and prepares to draw on the chalk board.
NEIL
If the poem’s score for perfection is
plotted along the horizontal of a graph,
and its importance is plotted on the
vertical, then calculating the total
area of the poem yields the measure of
its greatness.
Keating draws a corresponding graph on the board and the students
dutifully copy it down.
NEIL
A sonnet by Byron may score high on the
vertical, but only average on the
horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on
the other hand, would score high both
horizontally and vertically, yielding a
massive total area, thereby revealing the
poem to be truly great. As you proceed
through the poetry in this book, practice
this rating method. As your ability to
evaluate poems in this matter grows, so
will – so will your enjoyment and
understanding of poetry.
Neil sets the book down and takes off his glasses. The student sitting
across from him is discretely trying to eat. Keating turns away from
the chalkboard with a smile.
KEATING
Excrement. That’s what I think of Mr. J.
Evans Pritchard. We’re not laying pipe,
we’re talking about poetry.
Love, empathy, friendship, honor: he can explain all that. And all you need to do is “use” these things to achieve happiness and reduce suffering. It’s a relatively simple matter, like the equally evolution-explicable thing called poetry. And best of all, that statement is more faith-based than the entire Catholic Church. How else to interpret the simultaneous remarks “Evolution can explain all these things” and “Does it matter how those mechanisms came to be?”
Me: I rolled a 12 in “honor”. I will use my mad honor skillz to achieve all sorts of happiness and avoid lots of suffering. Would you folks out there in readerland mind if I use my empathy and love skillz on you to achieve happiness and avoid suffering? Also, could somebody give me some advice on how to use my friendship skills in order to attract babes? Chicks like guys with skills: love skills, empathy skills, bowhunting skills. When I meet the girl with the highest likelihood of producing offspring who will survive to adulthood and reproduce, I will gaze into her eyes and say, “I’m hoping to enter into a sexually reproductive relationship in which I can use love, friendship, honor and similarly beneficial behaviors in order to breed organisms with a higher likelihood of survival. You appear to be genetically suitable for this and my subjective feelings also indicate that you are also likely to be useful in my goal of achieving happiness and avoiding suffering. Please consider my proposal for a long-term social contract in which I might exploit your qualities in this regard while offering some form of beneficial behavior in return.”
And people say the New Atheists are socially and emotionally backward. Vanguard of History or the first post-human philosophers? Your call.
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