I have received a few outraged emails from folks I will not name as I don’t think this should be an issue about them, expressing ire over the fact that I have either not posted some of their comments or that I responded to them in a particular way that they believed to be over the top (apparently ignoring that this person and I have a long history that has not been happy). One of these emails was even vaguely threatening, digging up stuff on me on the internet as if to say “I know who you are!” This, of course, reminded me of tactics I’ve seen on rightwing blogs where people go after the personal lives of their opponents when they do not like what they’re saying and posting it on their blog inviting others to go after them at home or in their place of work. At any rate, I think a very basic point is being missed in these exchanges: civility, or, according to Merriam-Webster, a: civilized conduct, especially: COURTESY, POLITENESS, b: a polite act or expression.
I don’t know why this point is so difficult to grasp: Rudeness, mocking behavior, sarcasms, insults, etc., simply do not translate well in this medium and cause discussions to spiral out of control, becoming like a Cold War arms race, where each side begins to respond to the other side in a more heated manner, hurling uglier and uglier insults at one another. I admit it, I have a thin skin about these things. I don’t like them. I don’t feel I need them in my life. I don’t think a person’s intellectual contribution outweighs whether or not they contribute it in a way that they are civil. That is, given the choice of enduring a really obnoxious person that is brilliant and not enduring that person at all, I’ll choose the latter. I do not associate with mean and rude people in real life and have no desire to do so here. There’s plenty of other stimulating engagement to be had, so why bother with those who can’t be bothered to conduct themselves in a civil way?
If Hegel taught us one thing, it is that social relations are, in part, based on mutual recognition and can only proceed on the basis of mutual recognition. Where that recognition is lacking or absent you only get endless struggle and conflict. Recognition and respect does not mean agreement, but it does entail relating to others with a modicum of politeness and respect. When I have occasionally pointed out incivility in another person’s comments or mode of address, I have either been told that I can’t take criticism and just want a bunch of people who agree with me milling about, or have been rewarded with the ever popular “but you do it to!” With regard to the former charge, I’m more than happy to entertain criticisms. What I can’t stand is obnoxious rudeness, not criticism or disagreement. Moreover, this way of responding is itself rude. When someone says to you “look, I really don’t like or enjoy how you’re addressing me!” you should say “sorry, my bad!”, not compound the problem by further attacking the person who feels they’ve been wrongly treated… At least, that’s the way a rational person who’s genuinely interested in discussion and the issues at hand, and who cares about others would respond. With regard to the latter charge, this is the whole problem with incivility: once it starts it spirals out of control and you get both sides hurling their shit at one another without being able to determine who hurled shit first or why. In the mean time, the discussion gets entirely side tracked as people air their hurt feelings about being wronged in this or that way. In light of recent events, I’ve concluded that my only recourse is to delete those comments that I find to be lacking in civility, or to be rude, obnoxious, or combative without contributing anything to the discussion. There’s no reason I should make my blog a place for the graffiti of those who seem only to desire pot stirring or generating conflict. My blood pressure doesn’t need it and it doesn’t look to me that those who conduct themselves in this way are really interested in discussion. A little civility goes a long way. A little respect in how one comports oneself goes a long way.
May 14, 2009 at 12:43 am
how about these for definitions:
XXII. Disparagement is thinking too meanly of anyone, because we hate him.
Explanation.–Thus partiality is an effect of love, and disparagement an effect of hatred: so that partiality may also be defined as love, in so far as it induces a man to think too highly of a beloved object. Contrariwise, disparagement may be defined as hatred, in so far as it induces a man to think too meanly of a hated object. Cf. III. xxvi. note.
PROP. XLVIII. The emotions of over-esteem and disparagement are always bad.
Proof.–These emotions (see Def. of the Emotions, xxi. xxii.) are repugnant to reason; and are therefore (IV. xxvi. xxvii.) bad. Q.E.D.
I don’t understand how anyone can spend hundreds of hours reading Spinoza and not live Spinozistically. Or, it could be your example, Hegel. Not that Spinoza wasn’t cagey and snippy, but you gotta admit: the stakes were higher, like being burned at a stake, or being hung from one.
In these disputes, which can reveal fundamental disagreements and are very interesting, it becomes impossible to see that fundamental disagreement if there’s too much dust and gunpowder in the air—Unless that’s the whole point: to obscure your poor battle tactics, your lack of reinforcements, the fear on your soldiers’ faces.
May 14, 2009 at 12:48 am
Yep.
May 14, 2009 at 12:56 am
Levi,
You are regularly rude (and do not know it).
Part of this “rudeness” is the incapacity to see how what you distain most in others is a fault of your own.
A nice Spinozist self-reflection of course would tell you that the “sadness” you feel when others seem to diminish your power is a mistake you make in assuming an external cause.
May 14, 2009 at 1:03 am
Kevin,
This will be the last post of yours I’ll be posting, but your entire set of remarks in my post on the monstrosity of Christ and their tone was thoroughly obnoxious. I had said nothing to you to warrant such a mode of address and your way of expressing yourself came entirely out of the blue. It was exceedingly odd. In the subsequent post you wrote responding to my post, your remarks– not just to me but to others in that thread –became even more obnoxious. I thought we had arrived at a place where we could interact with each other in a civil way as we’d had a rather fruitful exchange for a few weeks, but I’ve now learned my lesson and see no further need to engage with you as you seem unable to engage in a civil and respectful way. I honestly don’t think this issue is primarily my fault. There are a few people I’ve engaged with that are rather obnoxious in their way of expressing themselves. I’ve made the mistake of continuing to respond to them rather than recognizing at the outset what I’m in for and leaving it there.
May 14, 2009 at 1:03 am
The Arboreal One: “I don’t understand how anyone can spend hundreds of hours reading Spinoza and not live Spinozistically.”
Kvond: It seems that you two have implicated me as a crazed emailist. I hope you, Levi, make it clear that whomever was riling you about deleted posts, these were comments other than those you delete from me, and I certainly didn’t email you. (If by chance there is another Spinoza influenced poster out there, I would be interested.)
May 14, 2009 at 1:26 am
I wasn’t referring to you at all with respect to the email issue, Kevin. I had completely forgotten about you until you saw fit to jump into this discussion.
May 14, 2009 at 1:30 am
And regardless of how I comport myself on occasion, the call for civility is no less bad advice for all that. To say otherwise would be to fall into what is known as the inconsistency ad hominem. The whole problem with your argument, however, is that you seem to be absolving yourself of all responsibility here, wishing to say it’s “just the result of how I come off” without any complicity on your part. It’s not as if I’m exactly alone in this experience of you. These things are bi-directional as I argued in the post. Our exchange in the Monstrosity of Jesus post is to the point here. You began by questioning my interpretation of Scripture. I responded by saying that’s a good question and that I didn’t have an answer to it. The next morning I refined my position, explaining the various bits of textual evidence upon which I base my view. Your remarks got increasingly sarcastic, ignoring that evidence altogether, rejecting additional textual evidence that was provided by me and others on the grounds that it wasn’t in the original post (the post would have had to have been a book to include all that evidence), and making bizarre arguments like “Jesus didn’t read Lacan or Levi-Strauss”. I finally lost patience. I requested, a few times, that you moderate your comments and tone. You insisted on seeing me as the bad guy despite the fact that I was really rather calm about the whole thing and then did your gig of going to your blog and writing a disdainful, sarcastic post. I don’t think I was “coming off” in any particular way in this exchange. I didn’t even insist that you agree and tried to head off the discussion from the outset.
May 14, 2009 at 1:57 am
Levi,
100%. It has been from the beginning that we simply, chemically, do not react well to each other. I am an extremely agressive interlocultor when I sense rhetorical agression (or any number of other rhetorical qualities that seem to characterize your style). I will not go into whose fault it is, as I take it simply to be a “quality” of our mutual engagment, part of the difficulty residing in that you do not realize how aggressive (or defensive) that you are, and my very low tolerance for the same (when I am on your site. If you notice we get along fine in other domains). I don’t think you realize that you regularly diminish the voice of the person who is questioning you, unless somehow their question comes off as a compliment, for whatever that is worth. I came to realize that the only way I can approach you is if I have several compliments in hand, first. And truthfully it is not my style, and I forget this necessity. (My perception.)
As for a bunch of people agreeing “how I am” you know very well that a bunch of people also agree “how you are”. It does not do well to talk of a group of people, but better to look at individual exchanges. For instance, I know not to talk about Kant with Mikhail, because things just go bad. But I enjoy discussing things of every other topic with him.
I would like to apologize for being harsh with you, but such an apology would be mere words just as your own apologies to me have resulted in no substantial change in how you discuss things with me. I do not believe in insubstantial apology. I certainly am sorry that we have such difficulty because we both have a love for similiar interests, and perhaps if we were in person we would get along just dandy. In print though my usual, edged, often bracing but embracing, manner cuts too far down to the quick for you.
For this reason I certainly respect your limits, and if I were your friend I would probably advise you to steer clear of those that hurt you. You are a very sensitive person, probably more sensitive than you think you are, and it is a sensitivity that allows you to care about the things your write, and sense deep connections between ideas.
I wish you no ill will, and I hope you wish me the same.
The best.
May 14, 2009 at 2:07 am
>I will not go into whose fault it is, as I take it simply to be a “quality” of our mutual engagment, part of the difficulty residing in that you do not realize how aggressive (or defensive) that you are, and my very low tolerance for the same (when I am on your site. If you notice we get along fine in other domains).
Even though this comment probably won’t go through the filter, this sums it up exactly.
May 14, 2009 at 2:15 am
The thing is that most of those who characterize me in this way or who at least say so– with the very notable exception of Alexei –are not themselves very credible on this issue as they have a tendency to pounce first in an extremely rude and sarcastic way and then express a lot of surprise when others respond in kind (and I base this not on my interactions with them, but with observations of their interactions with others). They seem to thrive on conflict for the sake of conflict and take delight in stirring the pot. Alexei is different here. He is an above the board guy that always strives to be civil, to keep the personal out of it, and to present arguments in support of his position. Generally he’s even fairly generous in his interpretations of positions of others, while still disagreeing. Unfortunately Alexei got caught up in the cross-fire of other heated affects and he really didn’t deserve some of the heat thrown his way. I am aware that I have a very strident, assertive, and self-confident voice that can rub others the wrong way. There’s really not a whole lot I can do about that. I make assertions, I try to provide arguments for my positions, I take sides. That’s how I write, perhaps a bit like a military operation. It’s not personal and its not directed at others, but I do often come off as “lecturing” others because I try to dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s, spelling everything out to the best of my ability. This really gets under the skin of some people as they take me to be talking down to them and trying to “educate” them. Part of it is that once I start writing I just keep going. It’s like a mental tick. Part of it has to do with how I was brought up– as I described in my first post on Atheology –where I would be questioned for hours for each claim I made with a physical beating inevitably awaiting me at the end regardless of how well I argued my case. Of course, no one else is obligated to deal with my neurotic symptoms. I get that.
May 14, 2009 at 2:16 am
One further point. I do not require compliments or kind words. I’m not sure where you get that idea. Simple civility and a lack of sarcasm and meanness is enough.
May 14, 2009 at 2:24 am
Sure Levi. This is your perception, and I accept that. Your relationship to compliments (the ones you effusively pay, and the ones you appreciate) is only to be discovered.
This being said, upon a supposedly rhetorically neutral ground – on your site – your rhetorical talking-down-tos go unchecked.
I’ve enjoyed our engagments, however tossed and turned. At the very most the spurred me to further express ideas that were more nacent, and to discover something in myself as well. This is what the internet is for, to encounter others one could not otherwise, though occasionally one encounters those that are not good for our constitution.
May 14, 2009 at 2:28 am
“For this reason I certainly respect your limits, and if I were your friend I would probably advise you to steer clear of those that hurt you. You are a very sensitive person, probably more sensitive than you think you are, and it is a sensitivity that allows you to care about the things your write, and sense deep connections between ideas.” … becomes … “I am aware that I have a very strident, assertive, and self-confident voice that can rub others the wrong way. There’s really not a whole lot I can do about that. I make assertions, I try to provide arguments for my positions, I take sides. That’s how I write, perhaps a bit like a military operation.”
Hmm.
May 14, 2009 at 2:36 am
The really depressing thing about all these discussions is that here we are in this tiny little corner of the blogosphere. Politically and ethically I suspect all of us share very similar commitments. Kvond and I are very close philosophically in a number of respects. Bryan, I suspect that you and I share a number of very similar Lacanian commitments despite you believing me to be a “distasteful Lacanian”. Yet for some reason, despite all these shared commitments, we nonetheless encounter all this endless strife as a result of arriving at positions based on different grounds. Now, if you extrapolate from this strange little corner of the universe to the broader universe, there’s little hope of a better way as regardless of how many shared aims there might be all sorts of other irrelevant things seem to get in the way.
May 14, 2009 at 2:40 am
Bryan: “I am aware that I have a very strident, assertive, and self-confident voice that can rub others the wrong way. There’s really not a whole lot I can do about that. I make assertions, I try to provide arguments for my positions, I take sides. That’s how I write, perhaps a bit like a military operation.”
Kvond: Ha. if this is my quote, I love it. Very much so. It is deeply in the Nietzschean tradition which realizes that ideas matter because they touch the very substance of life and our identities.
I take the disagreements between Levi and myself to be between two people who forcefully feel the reality of their ideas.
Levi and I simply handle disagreement upon our sites in different ways.
May 14, 2009 at 3:22 am
Kvond: Actually that was a quote from Levi’s response to your own above. I juxtaposed the two quotes to show how there seemed to have been an error in communication, that while you were emphasizing Levi’s sensitivity in these discussions, he took it to mean that he has militant machismo. So basically the opposite of what you said.
Levi: I never said you were a “distasteful Lacanian,” which you very well know. Here again is a problem I have when talking to you: your tendency to paraphrase or misquote people in such a way that makes them seem like assholes AND denigrates/devalues their arguments. I said that your rhetoric was “distasteful” (and why oh why do we continue to obsess and belabor over this? Really now?). What I *did* say was that your rhetoric was “distasteful,” and that’s an actual criticism, whereas calling you a “distasteful Lacanian” is simply an ad hominem attack, a subject you are no doubt deeply familiar with.
Normally, I consider myself a very civil person, especially amongst people whom I don’t consider peers (for example, I don’t consider you a peer–you have a Ph.D. in Philosophy, whereas I have a B.A. in History, which gives you many more years of experience in a variety of subject-areas of which I am only just beginning to become familiar). Nevertheless, I, like Kvond, get the sense when talking to you that I am being “talked down to” and simultaneously being engaged in an imaginary rivalry, which I have no interest in taking part of. This is what I find difficult to deal with, and it’s all the more problematic given how familiar you are with Lacan and have been through extensive analysis and training. And whenever I had a tendency to bring this up, you dabbled in a bit of “psychologizing” (certainly not psychoanalyzing) of your opponents, revealing more about your own problems than about your interlocutors.
Finally, just because we both share Lacanian commitments does not mean we should join together holding hands. I don’t think we even have to refer to the phenomenon of the “narcissism of small differences” here: if the theory is important enough, it is worth struggling for. And the closer we are theoretically, the more worth while it is to continue the struggle against one another. This doesn’t mean that it’s aimlessly antagonistic, “sniping,” or mere attacks on another’s character, nor does it mean that any of these debates are of minor import, as you seem to suggest above. I think they’re important, and that’s why they’re worth fighting over.
May 14, 2009 at 3:53 am
Bryan,
I just went over our previous discussions, and I did get a bit hard on you early on. My apologies for that.
May 14, 2009 at 4:20 am
Levi, don’t bother. You’re trying to do philosophy on this blog, and it’s been helpful (to me at least). Your commenters simply want to prove that they’re just as good as you are, and that’s of no interest. They ought to prove it simply by operating good blogs that others want to read.
You are focused on subject matter, they are focused on the social chessboard. It isn’t worth it. I’ve never seen you pick a fight on here in all my months of reading this blog. You’ve been angry with interlocutors a few times, but I’ve never seen you start a fight.
And the other guy is completely out of control. I just addressed that on my own blog.
May 14, 2009 at 8:01 am
dr sinthome, don’t let these bottoms get you down. listen to the egyptian provost queen – she’s smarter than all of em. anyway they’re just jealous of your lacanian prowess. i have found nearly all of your sermons useful, and they have gotten me hot over the years.
May 14, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Can we just be clear that neither Adam nor myself (nor anyone else associated with AUFS) made fun of you for using meds to treat your depression. You haven’t said this, but it was left a little ambiguous in your messages about them who did. For what it is worth, I agree with you that such remarks are disgusting and consequently it would really bother me if people thought they had been made by me or even friends of mine.
As it stands I really don’t appreciate, nor do I think they are grounded in reality, the associations you make between myself (and those I associate with) and the Religious Right, Nazis, Homophobes and so on. I get the impression you aren’t about to stop doing that and it really makes me want to point out quite a few ways in which you make genuine discussion very difficult, but there hardly seems to be a point. As Harman has pointed out there are people who suck others’ energy from them, nay-sayers and so forth, but casually tossing that out at anyone who disagrees with you strongly or even rudely is a bit much. It would seem there needs to be some kind of evaluative criteria for that.
May 14, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Well Anthony, I apologize but I am not going to back down when I encounter certain forms of rhetoric and see how they function. On the one hand, rudeness serves the ideological function of presenting a smokescreen that renders certain discussions entirely impossible. You will notice this on cable network news, where the conservative guest on a panel speaks so loudly and pervasively that no one else can get a word in edgewise. He does this– whether consciously or not, I do not know –to ensure that the other positions do not get aired at all, allowing him to hegemonize the field of discourse and, as it were, squeeze out all other positions. Something similar occurs with rudeness and insults, where the rudeness and insults freeze out the topic of discussion by turning the discussion into a discussion about how language is being used rather than the issue at hand. It’s a favorite technique of demagogues everywhere, not unlike the smoke of war being used to ones tactical benefit. On the other hand, there’s no way I’m going to back down on the “enabling” thesis when I see a certain way of arguing unfold that I believe confuses the issues and works to the advantage of a certain form of religiousity. I’ve outlined alternative forms of expression in this thread and in the thread over An und Fur Sich that would meet my criteria for both 1) defending a religious position, and 2) not falling into the category of being an enabler. I do not “causally toss out anyone who disagrees with me”, but look at the content of the disagreement and the rhetorical form it has. For example, throughout this discussion I would not classify Alex as being an enabler because of how he has qualified his own position and because he is not setting up stark oppositions where secularism is responsible for global capitalism and religion is the way to emancipation. We disagree in our positions, but I don’t see him as enabling what I’m objecting to.
May 14, 2009 at 11:11 pm
And no, I was not suggesting or implying that you or Adam were the ones that exploited my depression or use of medication in any discussion. To both of your merit, neither of you have ever attacked me on grounds quite that personal. I don’t think either of you have ever hinted that I must be a bad teacher either. While sometimes distasteful, you keep your harshness and sarcasm largely in the domain of me not knowing anything about religious thought or what I’m talking about which is at least relevant. As for the enabling thing, I guess I feel the same way about attacks you directed my way in the past, drawing a connection between atheism and the Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist atrocities, implicitly suggesting that somehow this is intrinsically bound up with atheism. As I recall, it was Adam that argued that, not you though. At least I have the good graces to acknowledge that your beliefs are in no way reflective of these ideologies I think you’re helping to sometimes enable and am making a point about how rhetoric functions.
May 15, 2009 at 2:44 am
dr sinthome did you pay ANY ATTENTION to my brilliant insight that if as Eastern Orthodoxy posits, God shall forever remaineth unknowable, and we can only be LIKE Gods, although never identical to God, then this is another way of saying that instead of seeking to find a Master in Jesus, we are in fact being asked to become our own Masters, which in essence and all things considered was also the point of Lacanalysis?
Not that I came to these conclusions with any help from Anthonia and Angelina. These two are running their corporate theology business only FOR THEIR BRETHREN.
May 15, 2009 at 4:43 am
With all due respect, and really I’m not sure how much is due with such a violent misreading, Adam did not draw a connection between atheism and the atrocities of Stalinism and Maoism in the way you imply above. He was pointing out that your logic would force you to think there is some connection between atheism and these horrors, not that your logic was right. As for the enabling thing, it is an insult. It isn’t something one can argue against, it is a charge against me personally rather than anything I have written. You are making an unreasonable demand that I decry all the bad things in every comment I make. Perhaps that kind of pedantry is something you admire (you certainly seem to try and practice it as if I need telling what happens in conservative talk shows), but it seems completely unnecessary amongst peers.
It is really annoying and a little troubling that you keep demanding Adam and myself “take responsibility” for our actions all the while acting as if you have done nothing wrong except argue well or some other laudable thing. Have I been rude to you? Probably. Do I think it has crossed the line in terms of civility? Not at all. I stand by my view, based on what you’ve written, that you do not give the same care to understanding religion as you do to understanding individuation or Badiou. That lack of care and seeming pedantic smugness with the way you present your views is what angers me. It has nothing with you insulting my “beliefs” (which you insist on shoving onto me even though I’ve written on AUFS about, in my view, the vacuity of the concept of belief for religion) or feeling threatened and everything to do with dislike at being talked down to. The careless and baseless charge of enabler is just one example of this smugness. To be clear, you don’t know me. Just because I don’t post every little thing that happens in my life does not give you the right to demand I give a public account of myself and my “beliefs” nor the kind of shit I have to deal with where I study.
And, yes, thank you for recognizing that this harshness does not dip into the personal realm (or the “that personal” realm as you term it). Now if only you could do the same.
May 15, 2009 at 5:26 am
Critiques of ideology are seldom effective when directed at the person in the midst of a particular ideological framework. Setting aside the whole discussion about enabling, I really haven’t the faintest clue as to what you believe Anthony. I know a bit about what you’re against, vaguely, but not a whit as to what you advocate. That makes any discussion rather difficult. I have a variety of different positions on religion. You might note that in my Atheology series and my post on the Monstrosity of Christ, I’ve been talking in extremely positive terms about a certain ethic and politics I see embodied in the teaching of Jesus. In other context, I think a good deal of contemporary religion has masked or distorted this. All of that said, I think of these social and ethical systems in purely secular terms, seeing nothing gained by appeals to divinity or the supernatural. I’m not sure what else you would expect from me.
May 15, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Picking up on a line of thought from the other thread that you’ve carried over here, I think you’re absolutely right in a purely formal way to say that what we do is more important than our intentions — that ideology functions through practice. You then take that very true insight and turn it into a justification for a really cheap attack when you claim that our rhetoric effectively helps the religious right and that it doesn’t matter what we “believe,” etc.
You are vastly overestimating the effect of your comment threads, it seems to me. Nothing about my day to day life or my vocation of teaching and scholarship enables the religious right. I’ve detailed my credentials in that regard multiple times and you’ve always agreed that this is the case. Yet somehow in our discussions, I am an enabler of the religious right for two reasons: (1) I identify in some way with Christianity, and (2) I argue that corporate (and I would add military) interests are more significant problems than the religious right or “religion” as such. You consistently misread the two together to mean that I’m posing religion vs. secularism and putting you on the evil side, but that’s not what I’ve ever been doing. As I’ve said, I’m trying to get you to be more circumspect in your anti-religious rhetoric so that you don’t wind up smearing the good religious people along with the crazies (something you always say you don’t intend to do when pressed — so don’t do it!), and I’m trying to keep people from getting stuck on secondary (though very real!) problems to the exclusion of the bigger and more serious ones (again, this is something you say you agree with when pressed). I know you’re going to disagree with my characterization here, but I want it to be out here for the record.
And I’m also glad that you have clarified that Anthony and I have never used your depression as a weapon against you — to me, such remarks are way out of bounds and far beyond what it would even occur to me to say. My intention is always to stay at the level of argument, although I do admittedly sometimes get into an annoying “meta” move of pointing out recurring patterns in our online interactions (but who doesn’t?).
May 15, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Here’s an apt sermonette:
“Hermeneutics sees the relations between various discourses as those of strands in a possible conversation, a conversation which presupposes no disciplinary matrix which unites the speakers, but where the hope of agreement is never lost so long as the conversation lasts. This hope is not a hope for an antecedently existing common ground, but simply hope for agreement, or, at least, exciting and fruitful disagreement… For hermeneutics, inquiry is routine conversation [among] persons whose paths through life have fallen together, united by civility rather than by a common goal, much less by a common ground.”
(Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 318)
May 15, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Adam,
I really appreciate your patience and willingness to continue dialogue despite the irritation of this discussion. I’m pretty much exhausted by the whole “enabler” debate and am going to do my best to just set it aside. I do think my relationship to religion is more complicated than you seem to think. My two posts on atheology and my post entitled the monstrosity of christ, for example, are grappling with the emancipatory possibilities I see embodied in a certain form of community that Jesus invented. You have tended to see me when I’m in my worst and most frustrated moments though.