A Note of Self-Reflection

At the wise suggestion of my wonderful wife, I intend to take a summer break from this blog each year. Though I thoroughly enjoy writing these posts and truly attempt to do so for its own sake, there are weeks in which I have written posts merely to maintain my self-imposed goal of a post per week. Taking off July and August will allow me some recuperation time as well as the ability to get slightly ahead if I continue to write. This decision, however, also brought with it much reflection on why I keep up with this site as it is; I have had several friends politely ask me what I am hoping to achieve with continually putting out these posts, which has certainly further stimulated such self-considerations. I thought that this would be a good time to provide a brief and somewhat imprecise biographical note for my readers (the few of you out there, whom I truly appreciate) as well as explain my intentions in perpetually uploading these brief essays and poems. My intention herein is solely to give a small window into the background thought that informs this blog which may moderately intrigue some readers and allow them to get more out of the various posts that I have uploaded and will continue to upload.

Though it may seem somewhat odd, it is likely best to begin with some background considerations that inform my personal character by simply listing them out. These aspects of my identity have either been mentioned in passing or are discernable from several posts I have provided, though I think there is value in making such details explicit. I am a committed Byzantine Catholic; a husband and father (a recent development, though I hear it is a permanent position); a Canadian; a doctoral student in Political Science, specializing in Political Theory (or Political Philosophy, depending whom you ask) and Canadian Politics; and a lover of English verse as well as a bad poet. All of these ‘identities,’ in my view, are always active in my writing to a greater or lesser degree, though this would also not be an exhaustive overview. I highlight these identities in particular as I believe they are the ones that have something to offer us in how we think about ourselves – either as something of a ‘fact’ with which we must wrestle or in a more normative sense. I hope that people who also consider themselves as sharing in any of these identities might find something in my writing worth reflecting upon for themselves. Of course, I do not necessarily think that I cater to all these different identities equally but that their confluence might also allow me to lure in someone so that he or she may discover a new interest in one of the other identities. I obviously can never know how this will go, but my Faith suggests that such developments should be left to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Assuming that this is a sufficient autobiographical overview, I believe my varied intentions will provide more clarity for any reader of this blog. I will begin within some simplistic considerations before unpacking more the substantive aspects of the three categories into which I have organized the blog: ‘Theory,’ ‘Social Commentary,’ and ‘Poetry.’ On the facile end, this blog provides a perfect outlet for me to actively write, even if it is never as formally as I do in my academic work. Granted, I think scholarship would do well to produce less dry material, but that is what is often demanded – this blog, therefore, offers something of a reprieve. I have a deep love for certain forms of argument such as the use of analogy, though this tends not to be favoured within the academy; here, however, I can freely employ such devices in a manner that I hope is enlightening for readers. As for the poetry uploads, I recognize that what I upload here is usually unworthy of proper publication or widespread notice; nevertheless, as I will further explicate below, this forum offers an incentive to make feeble attempts despite my ineptitude. Lastly, anyone who has read this blog will note that I am not the greatest editor of my own words – ergo, the pursuit of grammatical and syntactical perfection is strengthened by perpetually putting down one’s own words with the knowledge that others might try to read and understand them. Thus, even if this site were to have no readers, there are certain mundane practices of mine that are bettered by the maintenance of the blog – and this truly was the initial impetus that gave rise to this project. With such trivialities allayed, however, I can turn to more substantive considerations.

When I use the term ‘Theory,’ I tend to think about it in terms of its etymological root: to see. Of course, this is meant not merely in the sense of a visual seeing with the eyes but of the depths known only through the integration of the mind. In this way, theory tends to seek out that which is beneath our squabbles and mere opinions; it is the activity of seeking to understand what is not self-evident by sifting through that which appears evident. This has been the tradition since Greek antiquity, though it has manifested in various traditions of greater and lesser quality throughout the intervening centuries. In my theoretical posts, then, my intent is not to engage in any practical disputes or weigh in on the specific issues of the day – though I do recognize that theoretical engagements almost always suggest certain practical realities – but I would never say they are determinative of our mundane decisions. My purpose in such posts is to help others see that there are deeper realities upon which we can reflect; there are ideas worth pursuing for their own sake, though it has also been my experience that such pursuits tend to dampen our more combative and controlling tendencies. The hope to understand can often overcome the desire to dominate – though the former is not, as far as I can tell, a sure remedy for the latter. Theory, then, is an intrusion into our usual goings-on, but I think it is one that tends to weaken our more deleterious and arrogant tendencies – to theorize, and my intent in encouraging this sort of thinking, is to abate the pettiness involved in always being concerned with the morrow by replacing it with a kind of seeing that only perceives an Absolute actuality. The secret to happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.

Conversely, however, I do recognize that such a distanced sort of thinking is not the proper form for a human being. A man cannot be a philosopher and nothing else; to be so were either more or less than human. Moreover, there are times when I am attempting to theorize and wind up formulating quite practical injunctions. This is where my ‘Social Commentary’ section emerged from; I desired a forum to put my various edited-out sections that have no proper place in a theoretical musing, though I also realized that this additional form of writing would help others not think that I am so naive as to believe that I can remain utterly aloof from the affairs that are essential to human life. I tend to think that I still maintain a rather distanced tone throughout these practical considerations, though I also leave myself open to the possibility of making more strident claims about what should and should not be done. Any active reader of my posts will also note that themes of religion, prayer, and Christianity emerge there much more frequently, and I hope that this connection will be self-evident given this distinction from theory. I would therefore hope that any reader of these posts recognizes that I write them with a provisional tone; I am sure that these are the things that I believe, but I am not necessarily sure that they are the things I ought to believe – and therefore they are open to much more debate (of a fiery sort, I would imagine).

Finally, we come to ‘Poetry.’ At one level, this section of the blog is meant to be a much desired escape from the argumentative and taxing feelings that I think are more commonly attached to theorizing and moralizing. This flight from the weightiness of other ways of thinking is, for myself, the supreme purpose of poetry; fiction and verse tend to be what I seek out on Sunday afternoons after having gone to Liturgy and read some theology in the morning – these imaginative delights offer a kind of rest that is, for my soul, near divine. I do, however, recognize that what I offer on the blog is not that of Herbert nor Donne, Keats nor Eliot. I publish the poems not because I think they are worth immortalizing – I have two other reasons, with more weight on the latter. The first is that I believe that engaging in the practice of writing poetry has its own benefits for the writer that are not quite attained by the mere reader; the second is that I hope other people reading my feeble attempts might themselves feel that they can pursue poetry without demanding instant perfection from their verse. One negative effect of our overly connected and globalized planet is that the masters of every domain are perpetually at our disposal; seeing such a world of experts, we might assume that we can never attain such lofty poetical expressions (be that in poetry, music, painting, etc.) and therefore never try our hand. By putting out my own work, I hope there is something of a middle-ground that inspires hope and a love for executing the arts even imperfectly; by putting myself out as a seasoned amateur, I hope there may be more who try their hand at writing verse and wind up – even if only accidently – indeed becoming new, great poets.

My hope is that this brief overview has given some insights into why I have been maintaining this blog, especially so over the last six months and will continue to do so come the nearing of Autumn. With that said, I do want to make two more brief and somewhat disjunct observations. The first is that I put out all the content that I do because I genuinely love these subject matters and various ideas or debates. I evidently receive no income from this website (it is, in fact, a free form of WordPress that I use), so my only form of ‘reward’ is the interactions that come out of these posts. I deeply appreciate whenever readers leave a comment, even if it is not the beginning of a conversation, as it helps to show that these posts are worthwhile for at least one other person. What I would encourage, however, is a more profound engagement, even if voiced as disagreement or pushback, as I believe that everything that I put out on the blog is truly a matter of debate – and this is indeed what I am trying to stimulate. As I have echoed before on this blog, I love Socrates’s exhortation in Plato’s Phaedo to never let oneself become a ‘misologue,’ a hater of discussion, for this is the first great evil that besets the human heart. There is a comment section for a reason – and I invite you to use everything provided on this site (especially if you are being bombarded by the silly advertisements that keep it running).

The second disjunct observation and the last of this post that I want to make is something of a guilty admission. Despite the high-minded motivations that I ascribed to my creation of this website above, there is no doubt that I also possess a far more sinister motivation: the great sin of pride. I am sure that I frequently write things for their own sake and for a love of certain subjects (one that is so strong I feel the need to share it), but I just as surely know how I often write in the hope of being perceived as intelligent and something of a ‘seer.’ My own inadequacies and fears of being unnoticed and never having my studies appreciated surely factor into this (which is, admittedly, never the right reason to study in the first place), but I do attempt to keep this self-aggrandizing motivation at bay. I make this observation for two reasons. The first is that you, as the reader, should be aware of this; you should not take everything I write as genuine or correct, for it may be the product of my sinful desire to appear greater than I am. The second reason I bring this up is that, even if sinfully motivated, what I write may produce something genuinely good in another person, such as a true love for philosophy or poetry if they encounter some small nugget of intrigue in one of my posts; this I remark upon because it shows that the world is not all so bad, even among the bad itself, and that we might be so bold as to hope that our crooked souls are used Providentially to create straight lines – indeed, despite ourselves, the world might be made beautiful.