lifetheuniverseandeverything at triple speed?

TAKE 1

I have a real problem where I forget that marketing my work is a thing.

Last year, I published my first ever non-fiction philosophy doorstop tome, and I have consistently forgotten to talk about it in public ever since. It’s not that I have an aversion to self-promo or anything — I think it’s more that I don’t get any dopamine from engaging with the business side of writing and self-/indie pub, and my catecholamines-seeking ADHD brain would always rather be doing the creative side of…well, basically of anything.

But I didn’t open up the admin side of the blog today in order to talk about marketing, neurotransmitters, or even my books (per se). The progression of thoughts that led to the second half of the above paragraph looks something like this:

dopamine ← marketing ← my book Appetite for Antithesis,
that one I pubbed last year and forget to talk about.

So. Enough digressing. Lets get to the real intro for this post.

TAKE 2

Appetite for Antithesis (aka App4Ant) is my vulgarization of the work of one Dr. Peter Rollins, Northern Irish continental philosopher, radical theologian, and orthodox heretic. Specifically, my book covers several years’ worth of Pete’s annual event Atheism for Lent (AfL), a practice that’s part of his lifelong work. Some years back, he adopted for this work the name pyrotheology.

Pyrotheology is designed to help us embrace the difficulties of existence and face the challenges of being human. It involves a deep critique of any religious/ideological system that promises an escape from doubt and anxiety. Exposing the true tyranny that the pursuit of certainty and satisfaction creates (by feeding the very problems the pursuit promises to fix).
–Peter Rollins

Exactly what all of that means is stuff I cover in App4Ant, describing it in ways that make sense to me (because sometimes there’s a metric guano-ton of jargon — not in Pete’s own work, necessarily, but in a lot of the AfL primary sources and in the resulting community discussions). But if I were to summarize how I personally understand and relate to pyrotheology, I would probably say something like this:

Pete’s pyrotheology work is about burning down (not literally, most of the time)
the things, behaviors, and mindsets that keep us hustling for the thing and the next thing
and the next that promises us we can have it all and be it all. These things and next things
could be anything from relationships to religions, fitness to fandoms, secret knowledge
to self-help. We turn to leaders, preachers, dealers, influencers, and gurus, hoping that
one of them will give us The Answer. But all of this is just converting from one religion
to the next to the next to the next. We’re free to pursue happiness, and so we do: we
hustle and grind and chase and pursue until it kills us.

The goal of Pete’s pyrotheology is to stop…burn all of this down…learn to embrace all the lack within us (the nothing that terrifies us)…and accept that we are accepted.

Pyrotheology isn’t a religious system or a set of beliefs.
It’s a way of being in this universe.

What triggered my wanting to blog about this today is an online exchange I had this morning with a fellow follower of Pete’s work. Long story short-ish, we discussed whether or not listening to books or podcasts at 2x or 3x the normal speed might be yet one more symptom(?) of engaging in hustle-n-grind, aka the frenetic pursuit of wholeness and completeness. I shared the following thoughts in a more brief form but wanted to expand on them here a bit:

I. A tenet of pyrotheology: nothing will make you whole and complete. Here, “nothing” has a dual meaning:

1. It is not possible for you to become whole and complete, because the object or concept that could bring this about does not exist.
2. A nothing, a gap, a lack, an absence exists that can accomplish making you whole and complete.

Both of these are true everywhere, always, and all at once.

II. One of the things we’ve discussed over the years is that as we engage in a “pyro” way of being in the world, there’s a temptation to believe that the practice of pyrotheology is what will make us whole and complete.
It’s a kind of insidious temptation, really, and it relates to the paradox at the heart of this way of being:

1. The goal of pyrotheology is to free us from the frenetic pursuits of our lives so that we might live without the existential exhaustion that hustle-n-grind always results in. Instead, we “ravel” and “unravel” into a grace-marked way of being in this universe, embracing the gap within ourselves and others, and embracing doubt.
2. If we “lose our life” in this way, we “will save it” (Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 16:25, NRSVUE).
   But:
   • If we engage with pyrotheology in order to save ourselves…embrace this negativity so as to gain a benefit…if we go into lightlessness with the goal of passing through it and coming out into positivity on the other side, then
     • we have succumbed to the temptation to try resolving the paradox,
     • we have succumbed to the temptation to use pyrotheology as a reward system, and
     • we will end up returning to the frenetic behaviors we originally (thought we ) wanted to divest from.

It’s kind of like trying to do something out of sheer altruisim: it’s impossible, because even if our act doesn’t benefit us materially or externally, we will still come away with the satisfying feeling of having helped someone. Another example would be that in the moment in which I even think (much less say), “I am a humble person” — that’s the moment in which I stop being what I just claimed to be.

NOTE: as per usual when I write something, I feel as though I’m writing all around it
and not boiling it down to the essence of what I’m thinking. This is a life-long problem,
and I have heard many other writers lament it as well.
ALL Y’ALL. I SEE YOU.

ETYMOLOGICAL DIGRESSION

Anyone who knows me personally or is familiar with my nonfiction writing (especially App4Ant!) knew this was coming.

It occurs to me that maybe “temptation” is not the accurate word for a pyrotheological context. My personal history is full of religious jargon, so in the interest of VULGARIZING ALL THE THINGS, I figure I’d better check to see if I need to vulgarize “temptation” here. Thus (via Wiktionary):

to tempt ← (Middle English) ← (Old French) ← tentare (Latin) = to handle, touch, try, test

tentare: a Latin frequentative of tendere = to stretch, extend, distend, strive; to tend in any direction.

Allow me to simplify: a “frequentative” is a word form that indicates a repeated action. I didn’t know (or maybe I just didn’t remember), for example, that the English verb “to bobble” is a frequentative of “to bob.” Meaning that if you bobble, it means you bob repeatedly. “To slither” is a frequentative of “to slide”; “to swagger” is a frequentative of “to swag.” And cetera.

In Latin, the word for “to tempt” is a frequentative of…oh, let’s just pick one…”to extend.” So I guess if you’re a Roman of two millennia ago or a European priest of roughly the 10th century, and you are “tempted,” it means you’re (over?)extending again and again and again.

Indulging my own sense of whimsy, I submit that if English’s “to tempt” were also a frequentative, then the original verb could be “to striver.” Strivver? Or “to stretchle.”

TO EXTENDLE.

*ahem* I have wandered a bit afield.

My conclusion from all of this etymolarkey is that when we speak of feeling “tempted,” we’re indicating that we’re repeatedly perceiving a somewhat discomfiting pull toward something our conscious mind tells us not to engage with. (Our unconscious, as we all know, is another matter entirely.) We’re feeling stretched toward something that, if it isn’t the opposite of what we want to do, at least tends in a direction we believe would be harmful. When we feel tested (touchled?) in this way, we feel “thin…like butter spread over too much bread” (JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring). If we resist the harmful direction for long enough, we might come to feel distended as parts of us come nearer and nearer to yielding.

_____________________

For those of us engaging with pyrotheology: when we feel the draw to see this as something that makes us whole and complete — do we feel strivvered? stretched thin? As we put the various aspects (more aspects than I’m mentioning in this post) of pyrotheology into practice…and as we realize that we might be thinking of it as something that will finally make us happy…do we feel distended?

to distend ← distendo (Latin) = to stretch utterly asunder

…like butter spread so thin that it can’t hold together anymore.

_____________________

III. A tenet of pyrotheology: we need frequent reminders of our need to convert from our desperate “need” for conversion.

Therefore, IF listening to things at double and triple speed were a symptom of having succumbed to the command to pursue happiness, then each person who listens in this way would:

1. need reminders that aurally consuming as much material as possible in as short an amount of time as possible might just constitute an engagement with the toxic culture of grow grow grow, improve improve improve, more more more; and they would
2. need to do some honest self-reflection on their motivations. 

As a personal aside, I don’t like how it feels?? to listen to something at double or triple speed. It sounds unnatural to me, and if it’s fast enough, it sparks a certain measure of anxiety in me. The only time I’ve deliberately listened that way at length was when our Pyroheit 451 Crew (we don’t have a name, I just made this up on the fly) was going through Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. I listened to an audiobook for most of it, and the narrator spoke so ploddingly that I got mad every time I listened.

IV. My depression complaint has always been “the very core of me is not and never will be enough.”

It’s vital to remember that we’re all different, and none of us is an onion with an identifiable center beneath the layers. We each of us contain indescribably deep universes — which is horrific, because it means that each of us is unknowable. Oh sure, I can come to know my beloveds incredibly deeply and feel that I understand and see them. I might even feel that they understand and see me. (For he record, I do feel that way, and I appreciate and feel safe and have learned to accept their seeing.)

But the part of them I understand and see is miniscule compared to the greater part of them, of which I can barely even scratch the surface. Even my beloveds are infinite unknowns, as I am an infinite unknown to them.

For me, a salvatory effect of pyrotheology that I’m learning to live into derives from the ever-dawning comprehension that

1. there is no core (I am not an onion.);
2. none of us is ever “enough” because we lack and always will; and
3. experiencing grace means accepting that I am accepted in my infinite, horrific unknowableness and my not-enoughness.

How much more infinite is the unknown within the people we neither love nor are even acquainted with?
I can never assume that another’s behavior springs from the same motivation as my own same behavior.
Frenetic pursuit is always (about attaining) something.
But what feels frenetic to me might not be frenetic for someone else.

Thus, when one of us listens to things at triple speed or engages in any habitual behavior that at least appears to be part of hustle-n-grind, this might very well be a symptom of frenetic pursuing.
But when another of us engages in the same behaviors, this might not even result from the societal command to hustle and to grind and to like it. The same behaviors in another person might not be a symptom at all.

As I hinted at above, no one except the human in question can know if their own particular behavior constitutes participation in the frenetic pursuit of wholeness and completeness (or happiness, if you prefer).

To phrase it another way: only you can know whether or not your behaviors are an acquiescing to society’s demand that you do more, accomplish more, be more. It’s worth asking yourself if your habits help you or hinder you in embracing your lack; help you or hinder you in accepting that you are accepted; help you or hinder you in opening yourself to the infinite, horrific unknown of the other.

Do your behaviors bring you closer to the horrific, alien face of the other?
Or do your behaviors enable you to separate yourself even farther from that other?

Only you know whether life in this universe at frenetic triple-speed is your “sin” or not.