"We all go into the dark...." (critical engagement by an orthodox rebel)

This article by The Wall Street Journal was very interesting. Read it carefully before proceeding.

I wish to divulge a certain truth about myself: when it comes to fiction (and even real life), I like dark things. I like well crafted villains and situations of true peril. I like watching the hero struggle (victoriously, of course) through a dark night of the soul, culminating in new strength and resolve. I like evil, death, sorrow, and the like treated with a sense of respect and maturity. As I've pointed out elsewhere, the more seriously you take evil, the more seriously you take the good. The inkier the darkness, the more brilliant the light.

On the other hand, as Mrs. Gurdon points out in her article, dark things (like all good tools) can be abused. What I want to assert, however, is that what she has pointed out is not true "dark" fiction but rather a childish parodying of it. What she is pointing out is not darkness; it is depravity, and the authors involved ought to be ashamed for exposing children to such things. I applaud Mrs. Gurdon for exposing these travesties of fiction and their collective assault on the moral character of young adults and teenagers. However, for the sake of all things truly "dark," I feel compelled to try to offer (in a limited way) some parameters for what truly defines something that is "dark." I believe it involves at least two things.

First of all, anything that desires to call itself "dark" must have a sense of gravitas. I do not mean mere weight, nor do I mean boredom or pretentiousness, but rather a sense of seriousness. As mentioned earlier, there is a certain sense of respect and maturity given to the content of the story, all of the content (both the good and the bad). It is treated with gravity, not levity, nor is it treated flippantly, as though it didn't matter. The mark of any great piece of fiction (whether it be dark or not) is that it treats its content like it matters. It knows nothing of shock and titillation; only seriousness. When an author writes about our protagonist seeing a wall "covered with impaled heads and other dripping, black-rot body parts: hands, hearts, feet, ears, penises," I cannot take such a sentence seriously. It has no gravitas; it is simply gross. Gruesomeness does not equal seriousness, and anything that is truly dark has first and foremost a sense of seriousness about its contents.

Second of all, anything that desires to call itself "dark" must have a sense of somberness about it. If my first point stressed gravity, then this point is stressing tragedy. This is where most so-called "dark" stories miss the mark. They focus on the disgusting and the gross rather than the tragic; they expose the depravity rather than contemplating the tragedy. The problem with this is that depravity (aside from being repulsive and corrupting) has only superficial narrative power. Tragedy, however, has fundamental narrative power. It strikes deeper and last longer and is far more meaningful. Going into graphic detail about how some poor girl has sliced her arm "to ribbons" has no lasting power over the reader. It may shock and disgust you. It may haunt your brain as an image, but it has no fundamental effect on you. It has not changed your mind about anything, nor has it stirred you towards any physical or moral action (except, perhaps, buying a different book). What has been missed is that the cut arms of the girl are not nearly as potent as her cut soul, the latter being a far more universal (and thus relevant) reality than the former. Not everyone cuts their arms when they are sad, but everyone has been sad; and that which is truly "dark" focuses on that universal quality of sadness, on the underlying tragic elements of our lives.

A clarifications is in order. By "somberness" or tragedy, I do not mean merely a perpetual state of angst or ennui. A morbidly depressed character is not "dark"; they are just morbidly depressed. For a character to be "dark," they must be caught in the grip of tragedy, and either are struggling against it towards catharsis (if they are the hero) or have succumbed to it (if they are the villain). Sadness can never be the end unto itself, for that is the way of the villain. There must be a light at the end of this dark tunnel, but you have to go through the dark tunnel first.

That last sentence may strike some as odd (or old fashioned), but I claim it as the undeniable truth of true "dark" fiction, i.e., it is meant to offer us hope. As stated earlier, the darker the dark, the more stunning and sudden the light becomes. "Dark" fiction (perhaps more than any other fictive style) has this potential to make the light explode before us like a thousand symphonic stars, and it does it in this way: by taking us honestly and seriously through the dark. In perhaps the wildest of paradoxes, the authors that Mrs. Gurdon cites focus so intently on the dark that they cease to be dark at all; they become disgusting and depraved, mere repositories of vapid shock and titillation. For without light, darkness loses all meaning.

Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Why Religion Matters to Everyone; Or, The Universal Foundations and Consequences of Belief (as explained by an orthodox rebel)

The follow is a "response paper" I wrote while in grad school. It was during a rhetoric class that dealt with the reliability of texts (specifically rhetorical texts). Aside from a corrosive premise that all things deemed "rhetorical" were inherently propagandic and thus inherently unreliable, one thing that irked me about the class was the assumption that the reliability of religious texts was a issue only to the religious, and that the concerns of religion were of no consequence to the secular. In order to politely disillusion the class and its professor, I wrote the following paper. I present it here with a few, non-fundamental alterations.

If we are to be true critical thinkers, it is necessary to view no text as "off limits" in regard to discussion and critique. In the true spirit of Plato's "double open-endedness," no conclusion or assumption is immune from scrutiny. Everyone's assertions, if they are robust assertions, are up for grabs; this is a fact that we must not forget if we are to be honest and clear in our engagement with the world. That being said, I feel that this view of critical thinking must be bolstered with a necessary caution.

We must not kid ourselves: it is erroneous to assume that the reliability of religious texts is a "landmine" issue solely for the religious, and that somehow the non-religious stand in impunity on the sidelines. This is a false premise; it assumes what it seeks to prove, i.e., that religious texts are unreliable. The fact is that the non-religious (and even the anti-religious) have just as much at stake in the reliability of religious texts as the religious. This is because religious texts in general (and the biblical texts specifically) do not claim to be about religion or religious things. Rather, they claim to be about truth, reality, life and death, right and wrong, i.e., the way things really are and really ought to be. This means that their verification or falsification has consequences for all of us, because we all have some kind of foundational assumptions about what is and ought to be.

Most of the non and anti-religious, however, when considering this issue, do not understand this. Their default position runs something like this: The sincere yet wrong-headed religionist, upon discovering the falsification of their holy writ (upon which their entire worldview was grounded and found sustenance), is indeed in a world of trouble, perhaps more than nonchalant speculation has realized. To have your philosophical underpinnings completely undermined, to have your foundational assumptions on metaphysics, epistemology, and morality completely shattered into a million irreparable fragments and lost to the wind, is a position beyond all nightmares. It is true that some manage to survive such an ordeal and move on to some other philosophy, but history gives us other common responses to such a traumatic event: varying degrees of madness possibly accompanied by suicide. Beliefs are not so easily cast aside.

Beliefs, however, are not just a "religious" thing; they are a human thing. We all believe in something (even if it is in "nothing," like nihilists), and those beliefs/biases/assumptions shape our view of the world and how we should function in it. Moreover, because belief is an inherent human quality, the reversal of the non/anti-religious default position on the reliability of religious texts is an equally viable consideration (though it is oddly less considered).

Let us suppose, then, such a reversal. Let us imagine, instead of a sincere yet wrong-headed religionist, a born and bred, thoroughly modern secularist who has been long schooled in the tradition of his elders, viz., that the Dark Ages began at the birth of Christ and continued to the Enlightenment where mankind was set free from superstition and declared (in the words of Lucretius) that "religion...is trampled underfoot, / and by [this] victory we reach the stars." He has long been taught that religion was nothing more than a concoction of the weak-minded who happened to be in power, and that their chief points of serious doctrine were the flatness of the earth, the smallness of the universe, the number of angels on a pinhead, and other ludicrous assertions. As such, he sincerely believed in the death of God, the unquestionable reliability of empiricism, the infallibility of scientific inquiry, and the closed system of cause and effect that is Nature, whose highest (and only) elements are matter and energy. To him or her, religion has proved itself impotent and has long lost its voice in any and all matters other than those discussed in churches or seminaries, those last remaining cloisters of narrow-mindedness. Let this be our first supposition.

Now, let us additionally suppose that within the lifetime of this sincere secularist, there arises a rather rebellious traditional religionist with a strong head on his shoulders and a penchant for irony. This religionist (with tact and force) rises up and dares to proclaim that any and every religious text is open to rhetorical (and even scientific) scrutiny. Let us also suppose that this rebellious religionist (through long, arduous study and research) releases a seminal work to much controversy because it substantially demonstrates (on the word of "most scholars") the absolute reliability of religious texts. Let this be our second supposition.

If these two suppositions be the case (we are speaking hypothetically, of course), what is our conclusion? What has become of our secularist? He has suffered the same fate as the religionist, because the same cause has befallen him, and thus the same effect is produced: the very foundations of their beliefs (the death of God, etc.) have been shaken to the ground, and they too are left in the same nightmarish position. Though I could (and would) argue that moving from a vacuously atheistic, materialist position to a substantial robust, theistic position would ultimately result in sanity and joy rather than madness and sorrow, let it be enough for now to say that in the initial stages of the annihilation of first principles, the secular and the religious are in the same boat.

The point that we should gather is this: we take the issue of the reliability of religious texts far too lightly and flippantly if we assume some sort of immunity from the consequences of the verification or falsification of religious texts (or arguably any text whatsoever). We all have a stake in the claims of religion, and I would postulate that this is a fact that even the secular realize. It is perhaps true that the religious avidly fear analysis because that analysis may falsify their beliefs, but it is perhaps equally true that the secular fear such an analysis because it may very well verify the beliefs of the religious (and subsequently falsify their own). In other words, the avoidance of analysis (when there is any) is most likely not the result of stubborn ignorance or denial on the part of any party. The avoidance seems far more ecumenical, stemming from a very human, almost religious-like dread of the consequences. It may very well be that, on the one side, the religious quake, "What if I'm proven wrong?" While on the other side (and somehow able to be ignored), the secular fearfully whisper amongst themselves, "What if they're proven right?"

In either case, if we are to be critical thinkers who approach all texts and all views (with their assumptions and conclusions) honestly and openly, we would be wise to remember to tread deliberately yet softly, for the "religion" we trample on could be our own in the end.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011