You Are What Intrigues You

What interests you when you're all alone?

I can't tell you but I know it's mine. 

According to Storr,

Hobbies and interests are often aspects of a human being which most clearly define his individuality, and make him the person he is. To discover what really interests a person is to be well on the way to understanding them.

More often than not these interests "reflect what the individual does when he is alone, or when communication and interaction are at a minimum." 

Writing is an ambiguous activity, because while it is a solitary pursuit, I can't imagine pursuing it in the absence of my imaginary audience, with whom I am "alone together." At least in my imagination -- which doesn't necessarily mean that my audience is imaginary, rather, that there is a "connection" that occurs in my febrile imagination with a nonlocal interlocutor. Who understands me. 

That is to say, even if I don't have an audience, there's some kind of imaginary but satisfying circular connection in my head between expression and comprehension. Apparently, the ah-ha comes from inside my own melon and is projected into you folks.

Now, I have a lot of interests, and pursuing them takes all my time, notwithstanding their nonexistent temporal utility. In other words, I spend all my time enraptured by activities with no practical purpose.   

I am embarrassed to admit that socializing generally distracts me from the pursuit of these useless passions. Now, I wish I knew someone who truly shared all of my avocations, from baseball to audio to metaphysics, but that's an eccentric combo. 

Bishop Barron is a big baseball fan. He also loves Dylan. 

Too bad, because there's a man who will never be pope. 

Anyway, I find it interesting that a man can be defined by what interests him, which means that his definition is "outside" him, as it were. Or, the soul is like a concavity in search of the convexity that will fill it, so to speak; or a lock in search of the key(s) that will open a man to himself. 

If man is a microcosm and the cosmos is a macroman, what is man? We've already stipulated that a man is what interests him, so it seems that the cosmos is as large or as small as one's field of interests. For which reason, I suppose, Thomas says that "Wonder is the desire for knowledge," and that

the final happiness of man consists in this -- that in his soul is reflected the order of the whole universe. 

So, wonder is ultimately conformed to the totality of what is. We might say that wonder proceeds outward in order to reveal what is within -- that "intellectual beings make the most complete return to their own essences."

In knowing something outside themselves, they step outside themselves in a certain sense; in so far as they know that they know, they already begin to return to themselves, for the act of knowing is midway between the knower and the thing known.

This implies a kind of circular triadic structure proceeding from wonder --> outward --> inward. 

Nobody perceives himself to know except from the fact that he knows some object, because knowledge of some object is prior to knowledge of oneself as knowing. Hence the soul expressly attains to the perception of itself only through that which it knows or perceives.... 

Our mind is unable to know itself in such a way that it immediately apprehends itself, but arrives at knowledge of itself by the fact that it perceives other things. 

So, we are that about which we wonder; we are what intrigues us. 

This whole analysis is rather subtle and tricksy, for "A twofold relation is found between the soul and reality." On the one hand, "the real thing is itself in the soul in the manner of the soul," which is to say, "in a spiritual way," which is "the idea of intelligibility in so far as it [the real thing] is knowable."

On the other hand, "a real thing is the object of the soul inasmuch as the soul is inclined to it and ordered to it according to the mode of real being existing in itself." 

In or out. Make up your mind.

It's always both:

Knowledge takes place in the degree in which the thing known is in the knower, but love takes place inasmuch as the lover is united with the real object of his love.... 

Hence knowledge of lower things is more valuable than love of them, but love of higher things... is more valuable than knowledge.

Waitwut? "Knowledge of corporeal things is better than love of them." Nevertheless, "love has more unitive power than knowledge," for "in love the soul is fused together with the thing loved."

Now do God.

Okay, challenge accepted. Is it better that the Father knows the Son or that he loves the Son? Or do they amount to the same thing? Well, knowledge implies separation, while love implies union. But mustn't there be separation -- otherness -- in order for there to be union?  

We'll have to complete this line of thought in the next installment. Meanwhile, this is a coincidence:

One way to tell whether one person knows another well, is whether he is familiar with what that other person likes and does not like. Aristotle said it was a mark of friendship to like and dislike the same things....

Therefore, if we are friends with Jesus, we should have an idea of what He likes and dislikes. I mean, in His human nature -- those likes and dislikes which have the character of tastes, or visceral reactions.  

So, the question is not What would Jesus Do?, rather, what did he like? What interested him? What bored him? 

The essay is rather banal, but hints at a Raccoon sensibility, in that he seems to have favored a simple life with a lot of unstructured time. He liked the slackitude and quiet of nature. He also enjoyed wandering around on foot, and "had a taste for fine wine." 

Of course, there weren't many books around, but "he loved to read." He didn't have much use for politics, but "liked logic, wrangling, defining terms, drawing distinctions, disputation, and argument." As for people, he didn't like hypocrisy, haughtiness, and hardheartedness. 

I suggest we waive the annual fee and let him in the club.