Austin Hall Library

The Relativity of Life Before Death

I recently ran across the following journal entry. No doubt prompted by reading something, as are virtually all my journal entries, but I do not now recall what I was reading. In any event, the sentiment expressed seems wholly appropriate in this season of waiting.

"It is not that all that passes before is of no value, but it is at death that life really matters. Until then, the life of a man is unsettled, and of relative importance, because prior to death man may at any moment fall into ruin and disgrace before men and before God. One moment he may be deemed worthy of admiration and praise; the next moment he may be despised or disregarded altogether. One moment he may be the center of attention and the next moment he may go unnoticed in the world. But, at death, the relative, the qualified, the comparative, becomes settled and absolute. Man is then left to be for all eternity what he was at the moment of his passing. What he was is of importance insofar only as it prepared him for that moment."

From the Local Newspaper

I have been very busy in the great State of Texas lately. Unfortunately, however, I have had little time to read anything in recent days, except the local newspaper. But, boring the local paper is not!

This picture of four local college students with their trophy made the front page yesterday. The monster in the photo weighed eight-hundred, eighty (880) pounds, and was almost fourteen feet long. The bold young men caught the big guy in a nearby river and had to get a tractor to drag it from the water. Then the guys went dove hunting to celebrate.

Only in Texas.

No Need for More "Girly Men"

If you are a man who has somehow lost his way in this understandably confused postmodern era, then you should make your day by reading Harvey C. Mansfield's Manliness. Written by a Harvard University Government professor, this book is hardly right-wing misogynist propaganda. While not in the Great Books of Western Civilization category, Manliness is insightful reading based on sound scholarship.

More could have been written on this topic, and, perhaps much could have been written differently. But, there is one thing for certain. It takes a real man to write a book like this while teaching at Harvard.   

Syntax Matters

Seen on the way to a meeting in San Diego. This is why one should stay in school and learn one's grammar and syntax (if still taught there). Otherwise, it is quite possible to communicate something unintended. Or, perhaps, the syntax is correct. While I have no first-hand knowledge or experience to support my conclusion, I suspect it is easier for the live dancers to draw a crowd. 

More on the "Unadjusted Man"

Peter Viereck points out, in The Unadjusted Man (see the post below), that no Shakespeares and no Leonardos come from a depersonalized world in which "adjustment" exists as an end in itself. The abnormal desire for normalcy, as an end, not means, leads to an "unheroic abdication of resistance" and the abandonment of moral choice.

To be "unadjusted" in Viereck's sense is to be ridiculed by the overadjusted as maladjusted. The  unadjusted man is vulnerable--always ready to take a wound. But, since he is substantially vulnerable, he can be courageous. As Josef Pieper notes, there is no possibility of courage without vulnerability ("An angel cannot be courageous because it is not vulnerable").

This unadjusted man is not willing, however, to sustain a wound for its own sake. His selective unadjustedness rejects "superficial norms not for rejection's sake but to serve valid ones." (Viereck) It is adjustment to the ages and non-adjustment to the age.

Is it possible that modern culture has unwittingly embraced adjustment for the sake of adjustment, so that only the left in politics, and only the avant-garde in literature are heralded as nonconformists? Have all others come to be seen as maladjusted? Perhaps Viereck is right. In such a world, unadjustedness may be the only personal heroism left. 

"The Unadjusted Man"--A Good Kind of Social Deviant

Prompted by the reading of Gordon Zahn's In Solitary Witness (mentioned here), I began thinking yesterday, during a long flight from Montana, about the concepts of "social control" and "social deviance." Zahn notes that the behavior of most members of a society is governed by external standards or norms (he called them "regularities") that produce conformity. But, there are always those who manage to evade or reject the social controls that produce conformity. They are often seen as "outsiders" or "social deviants," that is, those who deviate from the "regularities" that produce social conformity.

Peter Viereck, in a book that didn't make much of a splash even back in the 1950s when it was first  published, proposed a new national hero: "the unadjusted man." The title of his book is actually The Unadjusted Man: A New American Hero, in which he describes this new hero in words Zahn said could well serve as a model for the social deviant. Viereck describes him as "a new liberator . . . a bad mixer . . . scandalously devoid of 'education for citizenship' . . . the final irreducible pebble that sabotages the omnipotence of even the smoothest-running machine." Viereck identifies St. Thomas More as the kind of man he has in mind, but Zahn says the characterization might fit Franz Jagerstatter as well.

While the garden variety social deviant often lacks objective justification for the principles that explain his behavior, there is another kind that is far different, more complex, and difficult for "normal" people to understand. That is because occasionally there comes along a man whose deviance "takes the form of a refusal to violate what the individual holds to be the significant or underlying real norms and values of human society." (Zahn). His behavior is value-driven and his values issue forth from the inner core of his being. Well aware that he is an "outsider," this "unadjusted man" adheres to norms and values of a reference group other than his non-deviating peers. And, if necessary, he will sacrifice self for principle.

I am just not so sure that "social control" is always a good thing. What if the external "regularities" in a culture tend to produce a conformity to ideas and behavior that lack principle? Living in what Albert Camus called "an unsacrosanct moment in history," it just may be that we are in need of more "unadjusted men" to help us find our way back to "normalcy."

Quotes From the Jagerstatter Commentaries

Among the limited writings that survived the imprisonment and death of peasant farmer Franz Jagerstatter, whom I referenced here in a previous post, were a series of "commentaries" on the conditions of the times and the responsibilities of Christian living during such times. Here are several quotes taken from those commentaries.

On Honesty: "When and how is one dishonest? First, when one presents himself to his fellow men as being something other than what he really is; second, when one constantly acts in a manner different from what he really thinks, says, or writes."

On Irresponsibility: "One often hears it said these days that 'it's all right for you to do this or that with an untroubled mind: the responsibility for what happens rests with someone else.' And in this way responsibility is passed on from one man to another. No one wants to accept responsibility for anything. Does this mean that when human judgment is finally passed on all the crimes and horrors being committed at this very time, one or two individuals must do penance for them all someday?"

On Leaders: "One really has no cause to be astonished that there are those who can no longer find their way in the great confusion of our day. People we think we can trust, who ought to be leading the way and setting a good example, are running along with the crowd."