Some days I have to work through this more than others: I need to convince myself that my life has some meaning and purpose.
When I was a child teachers and parents were fond of chanting bromides to the effect of how unique and special I was - as all children are averred to be. Jesus loves the little children. How special that infant bundle seems - even as he grows into that awkward little person: an air of singularity hangs over his head. Certainly some adults take the opposite tack - they feel their job is to take every one down a peg and sometimes they like to start young. For the most part I, and most people I notice who grew up with me are not too different - we grew secure in our possibilities.
In truth the possibilities hardly meet the challenge of being alive, of justifying existence.
We are barred subjects trapped on a signifying chain - as Lacan might say: our hopes and dreams are coupled with meeting the demands of The Other. An Other, by the way, who doesn't exist, but demands our castration (figuratively) all the same.
He's paraphrasing Ecclesiastes and St Paul for the un-initiated. (Why shouldn't St Paul be the first preacher of the death of God - when we become dead to the law, we are effectively dead and all obligations with that law's maker are dead too - that is: the Law is dead because the motive force behind it is un-manned, as it were, by Christ's death on the cross; that is: the actual death of the messiah testifies to the impotence of the Law, which is revealed to be a fortiori, an idol; and in so far as an idol, a testimony to its giver's absence.)
Mind you: I believe - and believe more fully than most. A curious trick of mine. I believe because it is absurd. Absurdity recognizes the delusion of life, of the chance occurrence of conscious life on this obscure planet. What is certain is that out of 107.7 billion people who've existed (according to a recent New Scientist where statisticians apparently calculate such things) each of us is a drop in the bucket - there is no amount of money anyone can accumulate; no amount of celebrity or articles published or success earned that will stand up in the great flood of entropy and nothingness that is life.
So I believe because it is absurd. Kierkegaard is succinct in Fear and Trembling that one hallmark of faith is that it is unspeakable - it doesn't make sense, and the moment you try to make it make sense, give it some plausibility, it is no longer faith. It is just sad.
Deleuze in Difference and Repetition remarks that each believer contains a closet atheist and each atheist harbors a secret believer. This is Becker's point: there is no escaping the conundrum - we are delusional in order to live - cold rationalism leaves us with no point in living. We all have faith in order to survive - to continue working and loving and making and planning (perhaps the militant atheist is the strongest believer of all, even though he might deny it; while the militant religious person is the only true atheist - their ardor to act for God simply proves that that God is dead). A god who coerces belief through violence from that god's adherents upon infidels testifies to divine impotence - coercion through force (whether violent language or action) simply indicates the insecurity and impotence of the coercer. The violence may succeed in its coercion, but in doing so the faith of coercer and coerced is unbelief.
Rene Girard tried to get this point across, as well as Hauerwas in his Peaceable Kingdom.
I live it out, albeit imperfectly. The god of my own impotence is strong.
Some days I feel it stronger than others: there is no point! My work, my thoughts, my art - are all pointless activities; and so are yours.
We may either act in love, which is creative, or act out of our anxieties, which is tied to the death drive. That is: we're either connective or disconnective. In connecting there is some small shred of relief from the prison of subjectivity.
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