Wet
fish, culture and shipwreck
Stephen
Curkpatrick
Does a fish know that
it is wet? We do not know, but given that “wet” is an experience we have in contrast
to dry, it is unlikely that it would know it is wet, in the same way at least,
we are generally not conscious of breathing air until we are denied it.
It is possible
to be swimming within an environment with assumptions about life, of which we
are unaware. For example, language is an immediate environment of our relationships,
sense of identity and responsibility among others that is also laden with implicit
values of which we may not be aware. Within what attitudes are we swimming without
recognising it?
A pervasive
attitude of the modern and postmodern eras is that humans are the measure of all
things—the modern, with an abstract notion of the universal human; the postmodern,
without a fixed view on what is human. In the modern focus on the universal human,
attempts are made to negotiate universal human meaning. In the amorphous or formless
view of humans in postmodernism, each of us supposedly makes our own meaning.
The postmodern
option is still a very modern concept—humans are the measure of all things—but
as outsourced to small tribes, as small as one person or perhaps a terrorist cell.
Humans are the measure of all things, whether as the universal human or as a singular
fragment that has been crisscrossed by the footprints of many others. In the postmodern,
every human is wholly free to leave a unique footprint of the human measure. Precisely
because the sum of this measure cannot be reached, footprints are added but without
any ascertainable sense of the whole.
Humans
as the measure of all things can be whittled down to every human as the measure
of life. In one sense, this is true. Humans perceive a reality that is unique
to each and ceases to exist when that site of human consciousness also ceases
to exist. Yet each perceived reality within singular human consciousness is always
coming up against other such worlds of perception. This is a source of interest,
engagement and crisis as perceived realities are also contested. There are like
worlds of perception that cohere in fear of unlike worlds of perception, so humans
congregate in tribes, between the wholly autonomous person and the universal human—the
tribal identity.
The perennial
contest of partisan perspective on the world occurs unabated—whether for the universal
human or for the tribal fragment that is supposedly, a true measure of being human.
Contest occurs in blame and counter-blame for why human life is not what it should
be, who is at fault and how the fault should be remedied. Even in the face of
fragmentation, something like a consensus of tribes is sought. Underpinning this
is an assumption that if we have the right view on things and people pursue it,
we could get it right! This remains a very modern concept, even if it is divvied
up among numerous sites as the postmodern.
The assumption
that humans are the measure of all things can be couched in a common set of global
perspectives and symbols consistent with modernity, or in a coordination of tribes
in various concords of peace within postmodern “difference.”
A little
Christian garnish can be added to either, such as following the example of Jesus,
as if this is transparently possible. Yet to be without any notion or articulation
of the necessary transformation needed to do this, is being a fish that does not
know it is wet. It is swimming in a culture that does not recognise the central
question Christian faith raises concerning human life and the response it articulates.
Whether as individual, tribal or global, humans—who are assumed to be the measure
of all things—are radically compromised and in need of transformation.
v
Any culture is a necessary
context for the nurture of human life but no culture can give a definitive perspective
on humanity. Human cultures are contexts in which people
experience the goodness of creation. Human life does not occur in a vacuum, any
more than a magpie could fly without the resistance of air.* Yet in every culture,
humans are also restless.
The things of time,
region and therefore culture are never adequate in assuaging this restlessness.
Cultural particularity as a horizon of human aspiration can also provide the materials
and instruments—traditional, social, economic and political—for compromising the
dignity of human life and the goodness of creation. War is an extreme example.
Christian testimony
is concerned with both the particularity of human life and its compromise. First,
Christian faith affirms human freedom, possibility, dignity and responsibility
in the context of community and creation. Second, Christian faith recognises that
human compromise is unrelenting, mutually destructive and radically inscribed—as
the good we intend but do not do and the evil we resist but unwittingly
do—in every time and region of human experience. Christian testimony speaks
into every culture and unlike idealism, honours human particularity, while also
disclosing in Jesus Christ what is durable beyond any culture and its compromised
expressions of human life.
In Christian testimony,
human expressions of culture—practical or reflective—are neither elevated to unquestioned
importance nor rejected as antithetical to all Christian expression. The centrality
of creation and incarnation in Christian testimony prevents such dualism. Where
dualism is expounded as Christian, this combination is rejected. Where human capability
and knowledge are elevated to equality with grace and truth in Jesus Christ, this
too is rejected.
What is critical in
all Christian engagement is recognition that our cultural, communal and tribal
associations and expressions of human existence are not definitive but partial
in their awareness of and capacity for the good, the true and the beautiful. Inasmuch
as this recognition occurs, good, true and beautiful expressions of human life,
thought, act and imagination contribute to the experience of creation and life
as the creator’s gifts.
v
Shipwrecked
on an unknown island, Robinson
Crusoe spends much time consolidating his survival within a new and strange environment.
He also imagines what his circumstances might be if he had retrieved nothing from
the shipwreck—an image that is applicable to our experience of life.
To be human is to
be cast into a particular time, place and possibilities—being here and not there,
in this time and not another. We are shipwrecked on this island and not another,
from this ship and its wreckage and not another—castaway for who knows how long.
We are washed up somewhere
on the shore of human life—with specific gender, ethnic, historical and cultural
identity. Birth and context can seem like a shipwreck in time that has left us
survivors on a particular shore. Each is surrounded by the debris of a shipwreck
with its specific assets for the challenge of life ahead.
Our shipwreck event
and island sojourn provide a composite site for evaluating what is important—an
island or context as everything we have, for which we can be thankful and an infinite
horizon as exposure to the reality of God, who surpasses the island of any context
or culture to disclose our lack and our true source of life.
Human particularity
is real, treasured and establishes both limits and possibilities. Yet the horizon
of God exceeds our peculiar site of wreckage and survival with its sum of things
and possibilities toward which we tend to trust. The call of God in Christ is
the true horizon of our lives, exceeding anything we can retrieve and value from
our historical, cultural and tribal shipwrecks.
*
After Kant’s dove