I wanted to move your question here because I think its an important one and I don’t want it to get lost inside the other two conversations growing within the original thread about feminist Mormonism on Patheos. It may end up with just the two of us talking, but that’s fine. I’m intrigued by the question and interested in seeing where the conversation leads us.

Your question was about if it more important for us to engage in self-discovery or to engage self-transcendence? Forgive me if my paraphrase is inaccurate. It was longer and probably a little more complex than that, so please correct and clarify as needed.

I have already answered your question elsewhere, but let me expand upon that answer by providing some personal information, which I hope will serve as an anecdotal example to support my thesis.

I have had two wives and a brother tell me I am a narcissist. These are important people to me. They know me more intimately than most, and the accusation troubled me. I don’t have the personality that allows me to blithely reject their judgment, but I do nonetheless have the sense that their judgment is somehow flawed. Perhaps this is born of a natural desire to exonerate myself and stand innocent of the accusation, but I don’t think so. I don’t think so because I also have a sense that I may not be innocent and the sense that the question of my innocence depends upon what it means to be a narcissist.

So my mind naturally turned to examine what they might have meant by the accusation. The second wife wasn’t familiar with the word, but she read it in a journal the first wife had written in rehab and it stuck. They understand the term to refer to a self-love that prevents one from caring about others. The accusation was meant by both of them to hurt rather than to instruct, so I think it reasonable for me to see the accuracy of their accusation as damaged by the motivation behind it. My brother, on the other hand, understands the term differently than it is understood in popular parlance. Nevertheless, I don’t know if he is accusing me of being unconditionally selfish or if he is employing the term as metaphor, drawing an analogy between me and the Greek youth who fell in love not with himself, but with a mediated (and, therefore, inauthentic) image of himself. He gets cagey when I have tried to discuss the subject with him, so I am not certain as to the nature of his accusation. As to the intent behind it, I suspect it too was meant to hurt rather than instruct, but I cannot be sure.

Understanding human nature allows me to understand that I am genetically predisposed to be self-interested, but not just self-interested. I am, as all humans are, more complex than that in that I am also genetically predisposed to suspend my self-interest (at least temporarily) in the interest of another or to see my self-interest and conjoined with the interest of another. Am I selfish? I am. But am I selfish to an extent beyond that to which I am innately predisposed. I don’t think so. But if this denial is merely self-protection, if I am, in fact, selfish to an unnatural degree, to an unhealthy degree, then that would most likely a product of my environment. It would also be something with real moral weight and something I should struggle to transcend. But, let’s continue on to the other sense of narcissism.

After a great deal of painful introspection, I have come to the conclusion that I am a narcissist in the metaphorical sense of the word. I don’t, however, see myself as born this way, genetically predisposed to invent, adopt, and protect an inauthentic self-image. (I don’t think anyone is. I can’t see the evolutionary pay-off for such thing.) As I stated elsewhere, I grew up in the paradoxical nexus of feelings of inadequacy and delusions of grandeur, and what is the narcissist but one who doesn’t know who he is or what his place in the world might be? I suspect those questions of identity are answered for most of us by our environment, but I also believe there can exist simultaneously other environmental forces that interfere with the transmission of that hypnopaedic message of self-identification, producing sometimes the psychic dilemma: “Am I shit or am I God?”

I don’t see this as true for everyone. Sure, everyone suffers moments of self-doubt, but this doubt, I think, is more particular than universal, manifesting itself in questions like, “Am I doing the right thing?” not “Am I worthy of love and respect?” Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the people I know who seem to have a strong clear sense of themselves really don’t. But if everyone is plagued with the latter kind of self-doubt, then that would imply a nativist origin, and as I said before, I can’t see the evolutionary pay-off for a species to be born to such a predisposition. Of course, this psychic dilemma could be instead a social meme that is passed down generationally to one extent or another through social interaction and not through our DNA. Whatever the case may be, I don’t feel understanding the origin of the dilemma is all that important.

What is important is that I gained a valuable insight about myself that I don’t regret despite the fact that the acquisition and possession of it was painful in the extreme. I had thought of myself as someone with a strong, clear sense of self and I was ashamed to discover how much of that “self” was role-playing. I was also deeply embarrassed by the thought that others had seen it before I did. I didn’t want to be that guy. Not at my age.

I hope I am not misunderstood here as spouting New Age, self-help bullshit. I don’t expect to know my authentic, original kernel-self before I die. No one can do that. I also don’t care about discovering what the forces were that prevented me from organically acquiring a strong, clear sense of myself. I simply care about examining each aspect of me I have carried with me for so many years, determining if it is authentic, and casting it aside if it is not.

My leaving the church was in some sense part of this process. I am not saying that the church made me inauthentic, but I was inauthentic while I was in the church. And that fact makes irrelevant, at least for me, the discussions we have had about staying engaged with the church in order to exert change from within. That’s not me. I am not an agent for social or moral change. I liked the costume once, but I took it off. It didn’t fit. I know there are people who are sincere and effective agents for social and moral change. I’m just not one of them and I value that discovery about myself.

The comments I made about Mormon feminism specifically and feminism generally are in some sense part of this process. In years past, I would have bent over backwards to be seen as fair-minded about the repression of women by men. It wouldn’t have felt like an act to me. It would have felt like a true display of my fair-mindedness, or rather of what I perceived others to define as fair-mindedness. My opinions on the subject today may be flawed, but I am no longer going to measure my words in order to be socially acceptable. I am instead energized by the argument the expression of those opinions produced. It is a valuable argument that offers to persuade me to refine my opinions. I would be a fool to avoid it for the sake of maintaining “polite discourse.” Those who know me and love me will continue to love me despite my boorishness. Those who can’t get past it, didn’t love me to begin with, so fuck ‘em.

I have spoken of the compensatory habit I have of speaking my thoughts out loud so I could hear how they sounded and in hearing, discovering if they are rationally sufficient. This habit is in a weird way helpful to this process of self-discovery. My writing this now is also my way of hearing my own thoughts about having been accused of narcissism, and thus, in some strange and ironic sense, a part of this process.

I keep speaking of these activities as being only “in some sense” a part of this process because I don’t want to over-determine the origin, nature, and purpose of these activities.

So back to your question: “Is it more important that we seek to understand ourselves or that we seek to transcend ourselves?” It seems to me this question poses a false dichotomy. I do not see these two struggles as mutually exclusive. I see them instead as roughly sequential, while also being recursive rather than linear.

At first, I have felt angry, ashamed, and depressed by the discovery that I am not the cinematic image I had created for myself. I think it took me a few years to get past it, but now I feel liberated and something close to exultant. The opportunity to unpack the authentic “me” by divesting the inauthentic could end up being both a gift of self-discovery and of self-transcendence.

How could it ever be an either/or proposition?

Nahum

Unfortunately for me, in Mormon culture there is no room for the possibility that one might leave the fold for intellectual reasons.  There is some talk about the devil employing the philosophies of men to blind the elect, but usually it is assumed that the drop-out has separated himself for one of two reasons: 1) anger; or, 2) guilt.  The first assumes the drop-out is an overly sensitive and unforgiving soul who has been offended by a local leader. The second usually assumes adultery —or worse— the habitual violation of the Word of Wisdom.  (Either way, the drop-out presumably feels uncomfortable standing in the presence of the righteous.)

Though I had suffered my share of idiotic leaders over the years and had been, in fact, an idiotic leader in my own way, I never saw that as anything more remarkable than the general, human condition.  Nor did I leave the church due to sin.  I was not being disobedient.  I had stopped believing.  There is a big difference, but apparently only to me.  Very, very few of the faithful whom I have known and respected and loved for 30 or more years can get their heads around the possibility that a person can just study and employ the requisitely appropriate logic to arrive at an opinion contrary to theirs.  In their minds, there has to be a reason other than, of course, the fact that the church is not what the leaders claim it is.

And I have had plenty of the alternative reasons applied to me.  I have had a dear friend of more than thirty years accuse me of leaving so that I “can drink and screw around all I want.”  (Does he really know so little of who I am, or is he unwittingly expressing the only reason he would leave?)  I have had family members suggest anger, depression, and/or narcissism as the root cause.  Very occasionally, I am told I am too intellectual for my own good. (Well, it is comforting to know that for those few, at least, sexual deviance is off the table.)

It was difficult for me at first to be publicly called to repentance at family get-togethers or to discover that my children were being told what a disservice I had done them for rejecting my priesthood responsibilities; nevertheless, I figured it was the price I had to pay for delivering such a shock and I expected that eventually those who loved me would grow more comfortable with and accepting of my decision.  It’s been about four years now.  They haven’t.

The most difficult ones to deal with are the ones who, in fact, see themselves as open-minded and accepting: “Well, I figure you are on your own journey.  I don’t judge you for your choice.”  What shameless, ill-considered nonsense!  The fact that judgment is even mentioned implies that I have done something they deem to be wrong, but they are too passive-agressive to weigh in with an honest opinion.

Almost equally annoying are those who feel the need to make excuses for me.  “Well, he had a really tough time with his marriage.”  “You know, he only drinks coffee because his doctor says it’s good for his fibro-myalgia.”  I know they mean well, but there is nothing in my life about which they need to become well-meaning.  When someone whispers confidentially, “Did you know he drinks beer?” the response of a non-jugdemental believer should be, “So what?” and not, “But he has a good soul.  He’s just a little lost right now.”

I left the church because I no longer believe in its tenets.  It’s that simple.

Although I left my faith with good wishes for all who choose to remain, today I no longer feel much patience for them.  I don’t want to talk with them about The Church.  I don’t want the unwitting proof of their complete ignorance of their cherished faith, let alone of the world they live in.  I don’t want to hear their testimonies.  I don’t want to see their tears or suffer their reassurances of love for me “no matter what.”  Yes, I still believe that Mormonism can make bad people good and good people better, but the past four years have taught me that you can’t cure stupid.

I have heard Obadiah say, “I choose to believe.”  I have also heard other Mormons speak of their faith as a choice.  Like Obadiah, these other Mormons seem to be well read enough to recognize their religion is not without historical or theological problems, but they still feel there is sufficient evidence in their lives to make the choice of belief.  None of these Mormons deny the contribution of environmental influences to that choice, but only insist that such influences are not fully determining, and, therefore, do not render the act of choosing a mere delusion of agency.

I, for a number of years and for a number of reasons, made the same choice; nevertheless, now that I overwhelmed by non-belief, I have the sense that I cannot choose to return once again to belief.  I wonder if this is actually true or if it just feels that way for the time being.  If it is just a temporary perception on my part, it feels so convincingly strong that I cannot imagine how I could accomplish a return to belief.  It feels so convincingly strong that I wonder if I actually ever chose non-belief or if it was forced on me by circumstance.

To keep things clear, I should stress that I am not talking about turning from disobedience and back to obedience or (as many would phrase it) from inactivity to activity.  I should also stress that I am not talking about disbelief, but rather non-belief. For the purpose of this discussion, allow me to establish disbelief as the opposite of (and possibly a form of) belief.  The theist makes a choice to believe in the existence of a personal god (or set of gods) that is (or are) concerned with humanity in general and/or with individual humans in particular.  Likewise, the atheist makes a choice to disbelieve, but in so doing takes a leap of faith just as the theist does.

Of course, most atheists deny any attribution of faith to their position of disbelief, which they see as scientific and not at all metaphysical.  However, I don’t use the word “faith” here to describe the paradox of a religiously held belief in anti-religion.  I use it instead to describe a choice based not upon complete evidence (something I see as unavailable to humans), but rather upon the sense of sufficient evidence.  (Although both the theist and the atheist claim sufficient evidence to support their respective choices, the atheist is, I think, correct in pointing out the qualitative differences in what each side counts as evidence.)

But let’s return to the notion of non-belief.  I think that the believer who moves from belief to non-belief passes through the gate of un-belief rather than disbelief.  Perhaps this sounds like a silly attempt at hair-splitting, but I see both belief and disbelief as the product that comes from a sense of sufficient evidence and, therefore, two sides of the same thing.  One can feel there is sufficient evidence to believe or one can feel there is sufficient evidence to disbelieve.  Unbelief, however, seems to me to be a moment collapse in a believer’s life when he or she perceives the evidence that once seemed sufficient to be, in reality, insufficient.  With that collapse, the former believer does not necessarily move from belief to disbelief.  Such a movement implies that the sufficiency of evidence supporting belief is replaced by a sufficiency of evidence supporting disbelief.  On the contrary, many believers once robbed of their belief, find themselves skeptical of the possibility for a sufficiency of evidence to support a new act of belief.  Thus, they do not adopt the atheist’s disbelief, but rather the agnostic’s non-belief.

Some atheist writers dismiss agnostics as intellectually dishonest cowards or logical weaklings.  But their “once burned, twice shy” attitude feels to the agnostic less like cowardice and more like wisdom.  At least, it does to me.

I began this exploration with the question about choosing non-belief.  I have the sense that belief and disbelief are both a matter of choice, but that non-belief is not.  I am not attempting to reject accountability.  I am simply attempting to explain my inability to imagine myself either joining the disbelievers or rejoining the believers.

Someone may insist that not choosing is the same as choosing not to choose, but this sounds to me more like word play than rational argument.  As an agnostic, I am not paralyzed by not taking sides in arguments over the big, ultimate questions.   I am fully capable of responding to and interacting with the world around me in a meaningful way because I have the sense that there is sufficient evidence for all of the ways I choose to respond and interact.  What seems most important, however, is my even stronger sense that there is insufficient evidence to support taking sides in questions concerning ultimate truth.  It is so strong, in fact, that I don’t feel like I am able to choose a side.

So I return to my original question: if we are not fully determined and can choose belief or disbelief, can one choose non-belief or is it forced upon one by a collapsing moment of unbelief.  If one can choose non-belief (in the way in which I have defined the word), how then can one un-choose it?

The “spiritual” way of knowing is claimed as a form of experience, but of what kind is this experience if it is not had through the five senses?  How can we be sure that a spiritual substance has moved through us delivering its own special brand of experience instead of the experience being produced by uncommon brain activity brought about through a particular neurochemical admixture.  It seems certain that certain people can produce these experiences at will (either through training or by means of a genetic predisposition), but why is this means of perception unavailable as an autonomic function to the majority of humanity?  When one of the great unwashed has a transcendent experience, the triggering brain cocktail is best explained as the product of both internal and external variables: diet, fatigue, acute trauma, chronic stress, etc.  When the internal and external variables are altered and the person is returned to the mundane world of experience, he or she cannot reproduce the experience at will. There is a democracy to the five senses.  I am suspicious of those who claim a place among the “spiritual” elite.

Regardless of what this transcendent mode of experience actually is, what it actually means is difficult (if not impossible) to determine.  Perhaps advances in neuroscience will eventually be able to establish for us a reliable body of knowledge that will allow us to define what this mode of experience is and what it means.  (In the meantime, I can quantify my sensual experience [even if only indirectly], interpret its meaning by imposing upon it the requisite logical rigor, and pass it on as truth (with a lower-case “t”).

The “rational” way of knowing doesn’t seem to me to be a mode of experience at all.  It is the application of disciplined thought to specific premises in order to draw out some meaning that feels like truth or Truth.  An obsessive subscription to this mental activity produced the Cartesian fantasy.  But, no one with good sense throws the baby out with the bathwater.  The application of reason is a useful tool in the quest for truth (and perhaps, Truth).  The potential trap it poses for such a quest, however, is when it is based upon scholastic, faith-based “truth.” One founds ones truth/Truth upon a series of premises whose validity is dependent upon indemonstrable “facts” that are Believed to be axiomatic merely because some authority has asserted them to be so.  Depending on how closely these premises match reality, the logic imposed upon our various forms of knowledge can produce the greatest degree of unreliability.  The purist, Cartesians eschewed experience, transcendental or sensual.  For them, knowledge was to be found in the mind and independent of the inevitable confusion to be found in experience.  But how do you find the ultimate axiom without an infinite, logical regression?  We can’t “know” that the universe is “turtles all the way down,” (We can’t even imagine it.) so what is to be gained by basing a Theory of Everything upon the topmost turtle?

Anyone who in childhood has assumed the sun moved through the sky knows that “sensual” experience is not entirely dependable as a source of knowledge.  But as demonstrable facts are collected and organized rationally into logical explanations capable of correct prediction, our five senses take on a dependability for revealing truths in a way not apparently offered by “spiritual” ways of knowing.  Of course, the knowledge to be gained sensually is gained indirectly and it inevitably gestures toward other truths as yet unknown.  Such knowledge is always of the “how” and never of the “what” and “why.”  This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs to the intellectually curious.  Hoping to escape the discomfort of facing a potentially inexplicable reality, the Positivists dismiss questions of “what” and “why” as pseudo-questions. This is tantamount to Melville’s Ahab giving up his obsession for the sake of a little peace-of-mind.

So here we all are, admitting to one way of knowing truth and debating the validity of another.  We are all of us products of a culture of certainty, and despite the criticism we have leveled at the certainty felt by fellow Mormons, we too display an unwarranted degree of certainty in our arguments.  We often fail employ nuance or subtlety.  This is attributable (in some degree) to rough and tumble nature of our conversations, but we still sometimes betray an unwarranted degree of certainty through categorical and definitive statements.  Some of us are certain that Truth is out there and that we can achieve it.  Others are certain they have to an important extent achieved it.  Still others are certain that Truth is not to be achieved by mankind.   (I am, of course, speaking of ultimate truth, Truth with a capital “T.”  I am not speaking of those truths, which provide us with the sufficient evidence of order that we need to make mundane decisions.)

I suspect that each of us can easily think of someone else in the council who fits in one of these three categories of certainty.  But who, upon reading this, thought first of himself and not of another?  Sorry for the preachment, my brothers, but one of the things that sets us apart is the fact that this group is a safe haven.  The hurt we have all felt –coming from friends, family and church leaders– is the product of certainty.

Perhaps it is our unexamined proclivity toward certainty that bring us to the same arguments each month.  Perhaps it that, which leads some of us to believe our way of looking at the world is superior to that of another.  Perhaps it is that, which leads some of us to suspect another of personal disrespect.

I think we are strengthened, rather than weakened, by being hesitant and tentative.  It prevents us from making sweeping declarations.  I once discovered that I defined Joseph Smith differently than everyone else in the room.  That was a surprising moment for me.  It didn’t prove me wrong because the majority was in disagreement, but it did remind me made me that I can assume too much and with too much confidence.

Your Brother in Uncertainty