"That you are here--that life exists, and identity"

No fluid segway exists for saying what I came on here to say, so let me blurt it out and connect things later. I am both afraid of any internal propensity within myself toward elitism, and, in contrast, partially believe myself a flag-bearer for the everyday man. The confession is honest, the appellation relatively accurate, and the mental dichotomy confusing. I reprimand myself every time I lord over someone, and combat over-lorders with a near excessive vigor.

I like common sense as much as I like cheeseburgers. I like the common experience; I like habit more than interlude or interruption. Normal seems altogether abnormal compared with abnormalities. Jay Leno’s chin looks funny, but a chin on every face looks like a miracle. God did not make all men for metaphysics; He made all men, to one degree or another, learners. What greater act exists for the teacher than the cultivation of minds made in the image of God? A teacher peddles things greater and more terrible than himself. Ideas rule the world.

And by the way—to interject—degrees of intelligence make no difference in the kingdom of Heaven. I am half tempted to wish mediocrity on all of us. Littleness treated confidently completes us. Children and their admirers flood the rivers of paradise. I think naivety works to a child’s psychological advantage, and that, perhaps, our Lord was talking about a faith easier to maintain due to smaller ability. I can hear Jesus adding a new verse to Matthew 5 now, “Blessed are the numbskulls, for they shall inherit the truth”! If we lack the capacity for volumes of knowledge, we avoid self-satisfaction. Humility rules when we are satisfied in the negative. After all, it is what we are not that makes us who we are. A triangle with 4 sides is no triangle. We’ve forgotten to read our Augustine, leaving behind the principle that it is none other than the image of God in us which causes us to sin. A blind man cannot sin with his eyes, only with the instruments available to him.

But this is only half of the truth. Easy is the marriage of humility to littleness, but hard is the marriage of self-confidence to littleness. Satan’s fall reflects the feminine self-consciousness as much as the masculine arrogance. He lacks the property of Deity like Susie lacks straight teeth. Both are tragic misunderstandings of beauty and the phelix culpa, and stem from a poor view on identity. They get things mixed upside down. Before we know it, Satan will be trying on a two piece, and Susie wielding a triton.

Our reasons for sinning always seems silly years later, when the experience is no longer fresh, and the memory abstracts. But its consequences rarely go unnoticed. An assault on our identity leaves an impression. Paul warns most severely against sexual sins for a reason: they destroy the both the physical and metaphysical man. And that, I think, is the great sin of elitism. Its primary failure reeks not of insecurity—though that is true— but of self-centered indifference to the identity of a consciousness external to itself. What of our axioms? What matters more than loving others? The Mona Lisa pales in comparison to Mona Lisa; quoted lines of Tennyson’s Ulysses are not the words of Ulysses. Paul at the coffee shop has a fairyland somewhere in his rib cage. Our friends, our lovers, our parents have a history rich with adventure and tragedy and love. To hell with metaphysics if it comes at the cost of a love which consists in knowing someone. I’d rather talk about whatever they want, like what they like, see what they see. The real trick seems a dance between the actualized, authentic self and the other dancers.

the K.H.