Anam Cara

We Cannot Live Without the Infinite

The functional mind fears infinity. It chooses to ignore the stirrings of the infinite in the soul and will not recognize the infinite present in Nature or person. Yet we cannot live without some form of the infinite. St. Augustine said, “Thou hast created us for Thy self O Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” The longing is ancient; it comes from Elsewhere. Our longing always stretches towards a further frontier. It is in our nature to seek the infinite. Consequently, the functionalist mind constructs its own infinite out of things, possessions, achievements, stimulants, and distractions. It is fixed on the treadmill of multiplication. This kind of addiction is portrayed with uncanny precision by Jorge Luis Borges in his story “The Book of Sand”: A man buys a book that is infinite and he becomes a prisoner of the book. This is the cold anonymous infinite; it is without care, tenderness, mercy, or mystery. It seems to awaken a longing that is repetitive and utterly obsessed with the single-destination kind of life. The wonder of human life is the generous diversity of presences that dwell in the house of the soul. While all of our inner presences belong together in the one intimacy, each presence is a different longing for a different destination. The cold infinite numbs our richness of longing and bundles all our longings until they make a magnetic projectile that draws our one life dementedly towards the palace of pale satisfaction. In contrast to the living and life-giving infinite, Hegel characterized this as “die schlechte Unendlichkeit,” i.e., bad infinity.

Some of the most sinister work of the cold infinite is apparent in the field of genetic engineering. Genetic intervention and manipulation allow unquestioned intrusion into the very identity of plant, animal, and even human species. The world continues each day; we get up, go to work, and put our hearts into the lives we live. Meanwhile, the researchers work away secretly in laboratories we know nothing about. These powerful, anonymous, skilled strangers are literally reinventing creation, adding new and altered species to the earth. They are altering life in a frightening way, and we are only faintly aware that what they call great developments are taking place. Suddenly, then, an ordinary-looking sheep appears on our television screens one evening. She bears the coquettish name Dolly. No other sheep in the world knows anything about her. She has never seen another sheep. It is astounding how those who control sinister change know how to parade their first product with such sickly innocence. Faust’s dilemma is now ours. We have sold our souls for knowledge that is a dangerous intrusion into realms where we have no right to trespass. The brilliance of the functionalist imagination is its technical ability to invent objects to perform new functions. This ability has been central to the origin, evolution, and definition of human society. We have learned to tame and harness the forces of Nature. Now, at the end of this millennium, the functionalist mind is exerting an exclusive monopoly and sinister control over our lives. We invented the machine, but now the high priests of the machine are reinventing us.

An infinite that ignores the sacred becomes monstrous. The sense of proportion disappears. In its most sinister sense anything is possible. Consumerism is the new religion. It is practised by increasing numbers of people in the Western world. Quantity is the new divinity; more and more products are offered. The more you have, the greater your status. The power of this divinity is its ability to reach you anywhere. The “good news” of what it offers you is permanently coming towards you. Its messages flow right into your home through television. Advertising is its liturgy. Such advertisements sell themselves before they sell the product. There is no surplus with which the mind can conjure in advertisements. Everything is exactly divisible by the purposes of those who write copy. The fact that skill is involved does not make advertising into an art form, any more than criminals who display skill and even courage, deserve our admiration. Advertising is schooling in false desire.

We could never become consumers if we had no desire. It is poignant that despite maturity and judgement there remain visceral appetites within your heart that crave immediate satisfaction. Once awakened to a certain intensity, appetite races towards the object of desire. Your ability to discern or distance yourself from this drive becomes redundant. The adult returns almost to a child-like single-mindedness. In this sense, consumerist attitude is an obsessive and uncritical passion. It has a powerful and sophisticated ability to deconstruct all resistance. This new divinity is never abstract and does not insist on any major moral obedience. It touches our longing in a very concrete way. It ensures that it always targets the pocket as well as the heart. This is done with consummate skill so that we inevitably find ourselves magnetically attracted to the advertised icon, buy it, and bring it home. The advertisement is a tiny thought package inserted deftly into the mind; once it opens and expands, its control over us is immense. At a broader cultural level, it is astounding to watch it unravel the complex network of the folk world. Within a few years, this virus can penetrate to the very heart of an intricate way of life that had taken hundreds of years of history to construct. Before long, a distinctive and unique way of life is rifled, and the inhabitants exiled and drawn into the net of consumerist culture.