Anything to say?

EveryNote.com http://tinyurl.com/km6h9l7
Since Christmas I have been writing a lot. I was writing a lot before Christmas too, but the Holidays gave me space to leave the keyboard alone, at least for a while.
This week I have given my attention to writing about democratic pluralism and religion. It's for a project I have been working on with my son Ben. It's also part of a larger work about the reluctant beginnings of pluralism—something about how religious discourse can't dominate the center of a pluralist society; or how an exclusive religious idea is lethal to a free society. The shrine at the center of society has to be empty.
I was thinking and writing it before the Charlie Hebdo murders in France—murders in the name of religion to silence an unwelcome voice; murders to push French society away from pluralism. I will still be writing it when the media move on to something else. I have been a fan of pluralism for a long time. That you and I can be free to think our own thoughts, and say our own piece, without fear of recrimination, seems important. While I choose not to use the same kinds of biting satire as the writers and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, I think it is important that they are free to use their art in whatever way they choose. John Stuart Mill, who was one of the formative voices on liberty in the nineteenth century, said something to the effect that the only restraint on our freedom is that we ought not hurt others. Fair enough. So, I was writing.
As I was writing I had a profound experience. My practice is to listen to music while I work. In part it depends on my mood, but mostly I listen to classical music or soundtracks (sometimes jazz). The other day my iTunes playlist was shuffling classical music. In the middle of writing a sentence I was arrested. On the playlist was Handel's Largo from Xerxes, (HWV 40). It's beauty washed over me and I simply could not write any more. If I admitted to such things, there was probably a tear or two. But I won't admit to it. It ushered me into profound silence. I literally couldn't do anything for a while.
That evening I was reading the Daodejing and found this (or perhaps was found by it):
Those who know don't talk,
Those who talk don't know.
Close your mouth,
block off your sense,
blunt your sharpness,
untie your knots,
soften your glare,
settle your dust.
This is primal identity.
Doadejing 56
Stephen Mitchell version, Harper Collins, 2004.
Such is a challenge for those of us who make a crust mostly by speaking and writing—professing, if you will. If Loazi is right—and he probably is—the very fact of my talking/writing is prima facie evidence that I don't know that of which I speak! This applies, too, to politicians, and media pundits, and religious leaders. The chances are they don't really know that of which they speak (however loquacious or convincing). But in a pluralist society—which basically means there are a lot of us from a bunch of different backgrounds, experiences, and commitments—each of us has a right to say what we want (including draw what we want ... a picture is worth a thousand words, after all).
We have a right to say, but sometimes perhaps it's best not to say, anything at all, for words are insufficient.
During the week, I also got to read an excellent PhD prospectus looking at religious language, trying to tackle the question of how we can speak of that which cannot be spoken of—that is, religious language about God. Language is symbolic, or perhaps ritualistic (the argument of the dissertation), but is only ever a kind of poor approximation. Even the best things you might say about God are approximations, and not really "it." We use words, because words are for us a primary means of communication. We make a terrible mistake when we take the words too seriously, as if the words were the thing referred to. The road sign warning of a sharp bend in the road is not the sharp bend in the road.
It strikes me that this is a large problem for ideas about "blasphemy." According to my Apple dictionary, blasphemy is "the act of speaking sacrilegiously about God." Here's the rub: if God cannot be spoken of at all—everything you say is at best a poor approximation—then you can't really speak sacrilegiously about God. You are whistling in the wind. If what you say positively about God isn't really "it," then what I say negatively about God isn't really "it" either. In other words, there is no such thing as blasphemy. The idea of blasphemy has been persistent in part because religious people take their words about God—or other's cartoons of the Prophet—far too seriously. Those who know don't talk, says the Dao.
Perhaps instead of writing any more I should just listen again to Handel's largo.
+Ab. Andy