Sympathetic Imagination

Sympathetic Imagination is a quality that cannot be obtained without the “annihilation of the self”[i]; to penetrate an object and become the object suggests the termination of your will, dreams, and needs. So is the sympathetic imagination a quality exhibited by the caring, or the understanding? That is, are some people born with imaginations that lend themselves to this metaphysical understanding, or does this sensitivity come from knowing everything about the object or person? Is it something that can be obtained through observation, or can it be studied? Probably both. I think we can ask ourselves what our dog wants. Once we understand his faces and mannerisms, we can come to memorize when they occur. When these two things become automatic, like a simple multiplication fact, and a rhythmic part of our daily routine, our sympathetic imagination for our pets wants is unconscious. It is a sort of love, like when you stare at someone’s eyes and know they want to be kissed. In that "extraordinary affinity, or sympathy [no] flavour of grossness" in life remains; "to share each other's emotions, fancies, and dreams" is something "super-sensitive, something absurd" – imaginary and obtainable.[IV] But how is this applicable to nature? “Ah, the heir, to his selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn”[ii]. Man is the heir here, and Hopkins suggests that our self-centeredness, our giant cities, sports cars, and monuments are clouding a special “vision” we should have with the universe. After all, mystical or not, we are the residue of an intelligent universe; human beings and our consciousness are a specialty in this vast space. But society is walking away from the “connection” – the sympathy, understanding, linkage to the world that spawned us. “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains”[iii]. Was Jesus’ sympathetic imagination so powerful he was constantly overwhelmed by a total understanding of the people and world around him? What of Gandhi or Buddha? Maybe the sympathetic imagination begins when we realize that we are human for no particular reason. Why wasn’t I simply born a German Sheppard? If God has a plan for all live on earth, you should be thankful you weren’t one of dozen blossoms on the unnoticed shrub against the Victorian-inspired building. And if you have no trust in God, then it is purely luck and coincidence that the universe bore you human. Either way, while you stop to smell the roses, or observe the birds, or laugh at gay bounce of an energetic French poodle, you must force yourself to imagine the brevity of life, and the constriction of its dynamic, the confines that your human brain does not possess. If you can imagine yourself flying, imagine yourself not being able to move. If you can imagine yourself not being able to move, imagine yourself not being able to speak. And then imagine yourself speaking to everyone at once, in whispers carried by the wind. Now, imagine trying to do all your living in a week, and you have sympathetically lived as a flower. And it was a life, short and sweet, filled with growth, maturation, consumption, and procreation.

[i] Carlyle, pg. 607
[ii] Hopkins, Tragic Vision, http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/Hopkins's%20Tragic%20Vision.html
[iii] Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

[iv] Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, pg. 243/253

Pattern of Conversion

Science and faith, the wants of mind and heart, the struggle between physical and mental events, are paradoxes that perplex us. But this is the price of consciousness, of evolving to self-realization. It is a regal quality, for the highest form of life, that yields consequential responsibility? This unique, secular quality creates the juxtaposition: how are we a part of this world and a part above it? The implied disparity with nature can leave us dissatisfied when “all [of nature, animals and plants] save the spirit of man, seem divine”. [i] The unnatural, rotten need for success and pride, the debauchery, temptation, vanity, and maliciousness of human beings is a detriment to this world. It would be a greener, happier place without us. Yet, it contains us. And so, our ultimate goal must be to procure purpose, not of wealth, power, or sex, but of value and worldly continuity. This is the voyage; the pilgrimage taken by the most selfless and fearless of explorers, the rebirth worth being born for.

Several Victorians recognized this baptism, rebirth, or palingenesis. “The soul’s abiding hope lay in its conversion from the tyranny of self to the higher purposes of the eternal process”. [ii] In the Victorian Era, this idea could not be separated from its Christianity, since that was the road of redemption. This caused conversion to have Christian morality infused into it, demanding a certain abandonment of pleasure for cleanliness, “sacrificing the pursuit of pleasure to the love of God”. [iii] This demand is unnecessary. The connection to everything around you, and the genuine desire to help it, does not necessitate the sacrifice of personal pleasures. As long as our actions connect or strengthen a universal connection, they are justified; we cannot afford to forget that “the enjoyments of life are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing” like tennis, laughing, eating amongst good company, and playing more tennis thereafter. [iv] This disassociation of conversion and Christianity I stress only because of the conservative turn, and thus holistic abandonment, that Christianity has on this world. Christ, save me from your followers.
This is not to say, shy away from God! O Contrer! “Art thou [nature] not the living garment of God?”[v] And if God is displaced “at the outside of his universe”[vi], we should, as the most capable beings, take in the stern responsibility of caring and respecting all of it. We are all woven of the same particles, and while we are all differently strung, we are equally deserving of the “infinite love [and] infinite pity” [vii] we want for ourselves. This purpose is the apotheosis of your being, an “annihilation of self”[viii] to produce love and sympathy.

For the selfless: "the grey rain curtain of this world rolls back and all turns to silver glass; and then you see it: white shores. And beyond: a far, green country under a swift sunrise." - Gandalf, The Return of the King

[i] John Henry Newman, page 596
[ii] Buckley, Pattern of Conversion, page 594
[iii] Buckley, Pattern of Conversion, page 599
[iv] John Mill, page 694
[v] Thomas Carlyle, page 608
[vi] Carlyle, page 606
[vii] Carlyle, page 608
[viii] Carlyle, page 607

Earthlings

For reasons most obvious to Professor Bump, I met up with Cool Cat at around 7:15 pm. I arrived before she did, and I had already acquired the first round of vegetarian handouts. The faces of prominent celebrities garnished the pages; they were being quoted on why they were vegetarian. Although interesting, it did little to persuade me. For me, celebrities are stupid until they prove otherwise. So, I chatted up Cool Cat. We attempted discussing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the conversation couldn’t be torn away from the awesome hold Victorian literature has on us. Before the movie commenced, Cat and I grabbed some bagels. Well, Cat grabbed one; I took two, half a raisin-cranberry loaf, orange juice, and three vegan Oreo cookies. I generously laced the bagels with the tofu/cream cheese.

The documentary started innocently enough, cliché enough. The camera zoomed into the Earth from the majestic view of space; the voice of the capable Joaquin Phoenix introduced the Earth and her inhabitants. Plants, animals, oceans, water, it was all there. But the mood quickly soured. Words like racism, sexism, species-ism, prejudice, and injustice began weaving into his narrative. It was an assault on the senses. Pictures of animal slaughter were paralleled with Holocaust ones, Joaquin Phoenix mourned the explicitly connected actions of our brutally insensitive race. This is the gist of the evening: the human race has proven, yet again, that we are miserable, inconsiderate, pathetic excuses for animals. We are the only part of the animal kingdom that kills for sport; we are the only organisms on this planet whose selfishness far exceeds the natural balance between predator and prey. And we are crudely going about it. We are literally raping animals out of any possible happiness. We bled them to death, beat them to death, stomp on them when they’re in our way, cut their beaks off, and snip their tails off. There was such a cacophony of terrorized animal shrieks that my head is still throbbing from the maddening noises of their agony. They are massed together, killed together, under fed, in some cases over fed, and always mistreated. The cows that milked to exhaustion, living maybe half their projected life expectancy, are sold to fast-food chains. Hens are caged in pens so small they can never stretch their wings. This extreme confinement maddens them, and they bounce into the cages until they start losing their feathers, rubbing their skin raw into sores that get infected, but never addressed medically. And this evil industry makes no exceptions. How can it be someone’s job to fire steel rods into pig’s heads as they struggle to get away? How can women sit, contain a goose with their thighs, and pluck them bare? Why do matadors get something out of killing an animal that has been weakened and is unfairly matched from the start? We’re filth, nasty and rotten.

I’ve given up pork. I know I’ll eat meat again; it is going to be organic, and I will chew it wondering if any of the organic standards were really kept, wondering if my chicken lived at all like a chicken without the curse of man would. But I have given up pork. My audio memory can’t drive their piercing oinks out.