Every social theory worth its weight is sure to make it clear what it isn't; life advice. This is science. Science is not something to live by. Science takes nothing for granted (or at least it's not supposed to). Social life absolutely must take things for granted. If, instead, of taking things for granted, one was constantly working out aprioris, comparisons and deep analysis, you wouldn't get a single thing done and, thus, wouldn't get the feelings that the social fulfills in all of us.
I constantly find myself slipping back and forth from experiencing the observed to observing the observed. Reading theory from the reflexive moment in the humanities are the culprit, but I take full responsibility for how I've come to adapt them into my life. I shouldn't have. Luhmann, Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze are not telling us how life should be lived, like the Greeks of yore. They're describing what they see and taking a stab at an explanation based on the ideas of those among and before them. This is science. Luhmann's second-order observation is a way to understand, not live.
Among all of this, what I take for granted becomes robbed of its significance. I have my sense of right/wrong, just/unjust, what makes me happy and what makes me sad. Too often, I try to analyze this, which is not only an anxious practice, but also one that I find dishonest in that it promises far more than actually delivers. This is because of the significance I've placed in the act of observing as a practice that leads to deeper understanding, when all it is is exactly that, an observation; no more, no less.
The HBO series Deadwood is a program that is deeply concerned with not only morals, but the grounds and circumstances from which they come, and get challenged. There are shows where things happen, and then there are show where things unfold. Deadwood doesn't feel like a show concerned with set-ups and resolutions as it is with the inevitable challenges that social life brings and how these challenges eventually boil and bubble up until something, anything, must happen.
And what happens is deeply emotional. The emotional is not something that science should ever attempt to understand because science, by its very nature and ethic, is unemotional. Science and emotion cannot mingle for the risk that each one poses to the other. Are emotions reasonable in their emergence? Of course. Is science partial to the inconsistencies and biases that emotion establishes? Yes. But to use science in a way in your own life as to try and break through the emotional to come to an understanding of yourself that isn't emotional, is impossible.
What Deadwood did for me, particularly with the story lines of Doc and the Preacher, is show me, presents to me, reveals to me, my feelings. In order for feelings to be understood at all, one cannot evoke them, but be shown them via the external. What are these feelings. Well, for one, there is no better character than the curmudgeon who gets angry at anyone not respecting their sound advice. This character, however, is a tricky one to develop because they can easily slip from caring asshole into just an asshole at any given moment. Deadwood does well not to let this happen and assures its audience of the Doc's good intentions with solitary moments where even he, the Doc, breaks down into prayer in order so the suffering of others ceases.
And then there's the Preacher. I don't even think I can write about this character; his place inside the story is simply too emotional. All I know is that this character shook within me something I haven't felt in a long time, and that is the kind of hope that is beyond the question of reason, the way that Nietzsche explored it. it's instead a hope that draws upon the wonder that is our surroundings and its unlikeliness. It's a hope that takes into account the persistence of life despite its circumstances. It's the hope that goes beyond good and evil; it's the hope that reveals that there's always a chance.
Comments