The Metaphysics of Anxiety
An insightful note came in today from one Michael Bush, referring to the first phrase of our Manifesto, “Killing the Buddha is a religion magazine for people made anxious by churches.” He writes:
To paraphrase Mrs. Roosevelt, no one can make you anxious without your permission.
You might consider changing your tag line: A religion blog for people who are anxious about churches.
As the saying goes, “Just sayin’.”
Take responsibility for your own stuff.
Presumably he means Eleanor Roosevelt’s adage, “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission [or, elsewhere, 'consent'].” It’s discussed all over the internet. But in fact, according to Ralph Keyes’s apparently invaluable The Quote Verifier, there is actually no evidence that the First Lady ever said or wrote those words anywhere. A quick Google Books search through various editions of her This Is My Story, from which the words supposedly come, corroborates Keyes’s conclusion.
I don’t point this out to undercut Michael’s point—after all, a statement can be true even if it didn’t come from the head of Mrs. Roosevelt. But it does, I hope, at least complicate the prospect of “Tak[ing] responsibility for your own stuff.” Whether they be quotations or or inferiorities or anxieties, we often find ourselves in possession of things that come with uncertain pedigrees. Sure, I could declare that it is me making myself anxious. It might be empowering to do so. But does that mean it’s right? What if, in fact, there are other forces at play? What if my attribution, like the attribution of the quotation to Mrs. Roosevelt seems to be, is mistaken?
There is a metaphysical question at work here. In Aristotelian philosophy, any occurrence can be said to have several different kinds of causes operating at different levels. On the one hand, I could say that I am letting myself be anxious. But I could also speak of the material causes, the neural engines at work in anxiety. Or, somewhat more removed, the formal reasons why I might be anxious, the contexts in my life that set the stage for anxiety to arise. And so on. It seems to me, therefore, that Michael’s suggestion that “I” should be the ultimate arbiter of anxiety is a choice among a multitude of possibilities—useful in certain cases, perhaps less so in others.
For certain religious traditions—and much modern self-help—taking personal responsibility in the way Michael describes is a cardinal rule. It is part of the process of constructing conscientious yet autonomous community members who take ownership of their decisions and, in turn, their sins. On the other hand, there are other traditions that eschew all of that. “I am not the doer,” they say. There is no I; the I, and thereby all sense of separateness from everything else, is an illusion. Or, instead, “Not yet I,” says Galatians 2:20, “but Christ lives in me.”
In our writing classes, most of us were taught to avoid passive voice constructions—like “made anxious by churches”—whenever possible. But, like most rules learnt in writing classes, there are lots of great reasons to break it. Scientists, for instance, should cling to passive voice in order to avoid making unproven causal relationships. In this particular case of our Manifesto, to my reading, the passive voice construction expresses something meaningful, a genuine sensation of helplessness. Michael might be right, that we would do well to buck up, to not let ourselves be so pathetic, and to grab life by the horns. But if we did, maybe we would be a different KtB. Maybe the sense of helplessness, the sense of being imposed upon, needs to be explored too.
According to some thinkers, notably Karl Marx’s inspirer Ludwig Feuerbach, supernatural religion is a projection people make of their own agency, ideals, and selves onto an outside, imaginary being. If this is at least in some sense true, KtB would do well to probe this experience of being imposed upon from the outside, even when perhaps it truly comes from within oneself.
All in all, I think we can stand by our phrasing, though Michael’s suggestion, clearly, has been extremely thought-provoking. Thank you!
Oh, and by the way, I don’t think we’d call ourselves a blog. We have a blog (you’re looking at it), but Killing the Buddha as a whole is rather more an online magazine.
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June 28th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
I said (a little less than) this in a backchannel email, but I’ll be glad to put it here.
Paraphrasing Mrs. Roosevelt was just an attempt to give credit where it might or might not be due. Don’t hyperfocus on her and what she might or might not have said.
The point is that I am responsible for my anxiety, and you are responsible for yours. If churches are “making” you anxious, you’re giving them permission and space in your life to do that. I’m just suggesting you take responsibility for your own responsibility, and I’ll take responsibility for mine.
June 28th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Regarding Roosevelt, I did write, “I don’t point this out to undercut Michael’s point—after all, a statement can be true even if it didn’t come from the head of Mrs. Roosevelt.” I hardly think this amounts to “hyperfocus[ing]” on her.
Precisely what you say is “the point” is what I’m saying may not be the only possible point. Why, exactly, are you so insistent on taking responsibility in this way, I wonder? Can you explain more fully?
June 28th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Because that is what adults do.
June 28th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Actually, adults understand that the world doesn’t necessarily revolve around them. Which means that sometimes — well, all the time, really — external factors play a role in our feelings.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Right. We respond emotionally and in other ways to external factors, like churches. It’s up to us if that response is anxiety or indifference or anger, or whatever. You have decided, for the time being at least, to be anxious about churches. Churches did not decide for you to be anxious about them.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Also, “anxious about” implies that my anxiety has an object, and the thing about anxiety is that it doesn’t have an object. It’s not like fear, which is normally “fear-of,” or worry, which is “worry-about,” but is instead directed at an ambiguity, a vapor, a unarticulated feeling, an unknown.
And, for me and for some of us, there’s something about churches that’s related to that void.
We can differ on what has made me anxious, and if I’m to blame for it, and if I’m being evasive or childish by not saying I did it to myself, and if anxiety is something I should be able to control, but let’s not say my anxiety is not anxiety.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:38 am
First off, Daniel, I don’t think anybody is saying your anxiety isn’t anxiety. If they were… oh boy. Emotions are wispy enough as it is, without us going around questioning what’s what.
Michael is right that “churches did not decide for you to be anxious about them.” But that’s not what’s being said. The church building, or even church community, need not decide to make one anxious in order for the whole institution, the smell of the place, and the way it reminds you of your childhood to all converge and together arouse a sense of anxiety.
In terms of the responsibility question—I think, in some respects, that Manifesto language is our starting point at KtB. It might be said that all we do amounts to the process of taking responsibility for sensations like the anxiety about churches we’ve all been talking about. The initial formulation, perhaps, is passive voice and vague, attributing the anxiety to something external. But, if you take time to wander through our archives, you won’t find a lot of purely resentful heaping blame on churches. What you’ll find, thankfully, are lots of people exploring what in themselves gives rise to such anxiety and how they can transform their own response. What I’m suggesting is that we need that naive starting point—passive voice, vagueness, and all—from which to begin the process of taking responsibility. Just as naive would be to say that taking responsibility can happen automatically, immediately, from the outset. The sensation arises first; naming it and claiming it may happen only after.
Perhaps the philosophical discourse best known for its analysis of anxiety is existentialism, from Kierkegaard to Sartre and (in theology) Tillich. There, anxiety is a starting point, a raw sensation that occurs in response to the condition of being-toward-death. The whole philosophical project amounts to the work of taking responsibility for that anxiety.
In that case, however, one soon realizes that the anxiety is not simply “raw.” It isn’t some purely biological event bubbling up in consciousness because of death in all people, in all times and places. As is so well-expressed in Nietzsche’s account of the “death of God,” that sensation of anxiety probably has a lot to do with the context of Christian thought for the last nearly 2,000 years. After so much fixation on l’heure de notre mort and ars moriendi, those for whom Christianity had lost its spell inherited a deep concern about death from the religion, but they lacked its coping mechanisms. Thus anxiety. To say that they alone are responsible for their own anxiety under-appreciates the history and context in which it arose.
In Heidegger’s analysis, “thrownness” is the operative term: the existential condition in which, at a fundamental phenomenological level, one finds oneself “in” an experience not of one’s choosing. Living “authentically” then, amounts to the hard work of taking responsibility for it.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:37 am
That was an excellent response, Nathan.
July 1st, 2009 at 1:17 am
It’s great to find this site where mature people are willing to listen and answer one another on real issues of dharma, practice, and non-dharma. I thought Michael was a little “hyperfocused” on the issue of responsibility for one’s own stuff, but he remained in dialogue. I really appreciated Nathan’s synthesis of Michael’s and Daniel’s views. Like to hear whether or not Michael found it a satisfactory statement of his view.
ER
July 6th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Another perspective , anxiety ,anger, saddness can all be intuitive
indicators when isolated in the intelect of reason. As in taking
responsability . In part one should try to take responsability in
self knowledge. In knowing my self I know that anxiety can mean
this place , these people, or this situation is not right for me
and my own personal growth. I am a feeling person , my body tells
me about the world around me . If some one is trust worthy , if the
situation is as it is presented. And in honor of that wisdom
innate in all of us that guides us if we listen. Anxiety is a link
in the wisdom .Now some time when I am around people I can become
very anxiouse. I thought it was about my inability to cope. I have
learned in reflection that some times we as human are opperating
to fill are own needs , be it due to insecuritys, fear and the
need for control of our fears by controling you in any way they
can. I have learned to value my own truth. To practice love , honor
and respect for my self as well as those around me. The anxiety
taught me to honor self.