During our community chat this week one of the issues we were talking about was “plausibility structures.” This idea comes from the sociology of knowledge and is a concept from the 1960s. A plausibility structure is a foundation level belief (or set of beliefs) that we hold and which is largely unquestioned. We hold these base level beliefs about life in lots of different ways, about lots of different things. Often a plausibility structure is held at an unconscious level. We often only become aware of it when it is challenged or when something triggers it to the fore. Conscious self-awareness will do that. Talk therapy, in an attitude of open and honest dialogue, will also do it.
Someone in the chat asked me, “So, Andy, what is your plausibility structure?” I answered without much thought, “Love is at the heart of the universe.”
Someone else asked, “Andy, how can you say that when there is so much un-love?” We had a fruitful discussion. Here is a more thoughtful answer (without the typos of online chat!)
I can make a case (as others have done) that says all the world’s great traditions have a central ethical concept of compassion. Though it is a theme in all the great religious and philosophical streams, often it becomes overshadowed by dogma and the sheer weight of debate. Nonetheless, if you look for it you will find it. It is an optimistic foundation level belief about the universe. You see it, for instance, very prominently in the writings of both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Love is at the heart of things.
Profound ideas are often best expressed in the context of stories. In the telling, stories have depths and nuances that engage the hearer at multiple levels. Story-telling has been a primary human way of transmitting the most important and foundational ideas that make sense of life from one generation to the next. Our plausibility structures are expressed in narratives, even when we can’t give adequate conceptual voice to them.
In the Christian telling, there are two important stories that point to love at the heart of the universe. The first is the story of God as Holy Trinity. The second is the story of Christ crucified.
Let me tell the story of God as Holy Trinity in vaguely Augustinian ways. There is a lover, there is a beloved and there is the energy of love between them. At the heart of all that is there is a relationship of love. The mystics have long told us (Jesus of Nazareth chief among them) that conceptions of God as “out there somewhere,” “detached and distant,” “unmoved mover” are inadequate. God is here, now, everywhere. “The realm of God is within you.” God is in all things. All things are in God. If this insight is true, then in all things—at the heart of all—is relationality. At the heart of all things is/are a lover, a beloved and the energy of love that is between them. In the Neoplatonic tradition, that was very important to early Christianity, all is One. It happens that this One is a relationship of love. Love is the movement of one to the other for the other’s good.
The second Christian telling answers more directly my friend’s question, “How can you say that love is at the heart of the universe when there is so much un-love?” The Christian story tells of the unjust killing of one who spoke of love. In the telling, this one (who was so in tune with God that he was called the Child of God) shows us that God suffers with all those who suffer.
In situations where there is un-love, where is love? Love is suffering with. Love is present as suffering. In fact, that is the Latin root of what compassion is: to suffer with.
Love at the heart of the universe is a trustworthy guide. It leads us to seek, to build and to cherish loving relationships with all. Where there is suffering, love leads us as compassion to suffer with and to work toward loving resolutions to complex and hurtful situations.
What’s your plausibility structure?