Zizek & Belief

Slavoj Zizek (one of my favorite contemporary thinkers/writers) claims that only an atheist can truly believe. To attempt to do justice to the subtlty and complexity of Zizek's account of belief, I would have to delve far deeper into the abyss of modern/postmodern philosophy than I am prepared to do in this context. What I would like to do is skate around this idea of the atheist as the true believer and muse about how this relates to contemporary intellectual life and, in particular, what it means to be 'progressive' when it comes to political thought and social action.

According to Zizek, the most critical moment for Christianity is when Jesus cries out from the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The disconnection between humanity and the divine is something that people struggled with long before the dawn of Christianity; so, if Jesus was just a man (perhaps a devoted, ethical, or even holy man, but nonetheless still human), then feeling forsaken by God simply functions as a reiteration of something that the Jewish people had already been experiencing and documenting for centuries. The will of the divine being other, its logic transcends (or at least opperates on a different level than) human logic. And encountering this dissonance, along with the necessary suffering it entails, is simply part of the religious life. However, if Jesus actually is God, then God undergoes and embodies a truly atheistic moment--as the experience of feeling forsaken by the divine becomes woven into the fabric of the divine itself, which paints a picture of God as a being (or idea) who forsakes even himself. Most Christian theologians would endeavor to preserve the unity or purported purity of their deity, even through this mysterious schizophrenic moment, but it may be the very incorporation of atheism into the nature of Christianity that makes its mythology so interesting, or even (dare I say) revolutionary. What if (to use Kantian terms) the Thing-in-Itself, the kernel of absolute reality out of which all manner of illusion and partial-truth are born, came to question its own status as such? Does nihilism inevitably ensue if we fail to cultivate some degree of faith in a perfect, though unseen, unifying factor that reigns (intentionally or against its own will) over everything else? Or, as Zizek suggests, perhaps an authentic, heartfelt denial of such a power underlies all potential creativity and forms one (possibly the only) distinct foundation on which actual belief can be founded.

Zizek tells a story that I find helpful (and amusing): There is a crazy man who believes that he is a kernel of corn. He checks himself into a mental hospital, where doctors work with him day after day--attempting to convince their patient that he is actually a man and not a kernel of corn. Finally, he seems to come around and everyone decides that he is stable enough to return to normal life outside of the institution. However, within minutes of checking out, the patient encounters a chicken on the side of the road and then runs screaming back to the hospital. The doctors meet him at the door and say, "Come on. We've been over this. You have absolutely nothing to be afraid of. You know that you're a man and not a kernel of corn." The patient replies, "Of course I know that. But does the chicken know it?"

There is probably some appropriate parallel with intellectuals and atheism: "We've been over this. You know that God isn't real, that God is just an idea that people have created to make themselves feel better about life...perhaps interesting anthropologically or something, but not real." The progressive intellectual might reply: "Yes, of course I know that. But does God know it?" Anyway, the point is that there is a vast difference between really believing something and simply acting like we believe. Religious dogmatists might be particularly easy to pick on, since it's
impossible to judge oneself (by arbitrary moral standards) as stringently as one applies judgment to others; it's hard to keep the evil within at bay, with so much effort put toward exposing the evil embodied by everyone else. To be fair, I think that most liberal intellectuals are just as guilty of acting like they believe certain things--attempting to cover up the truly conflicted nature of their inner lives. So-called political correctness (acting like everyone is equal) easily replaces any revolutionary attempt to enact true equality. Environmentalism (acting like we give a shit) can function in the same way, as we ignore the actual effects of our way of life on the natural world by labeling certain consumer choices as 'green.' The list could go on and on. Generally, I'm interested in how much energy we (yes, i mean all of) spend acting like we believe certain things, compared to the amount of energy it would actually take to uncover or develop authentic belief. Maybe, from a religious perspective, acting like we believe in God is enough to warrant being saved--a 'fake it til you make it' kind of mentality that acknowledges doubt as an intrinsic aspect of any faithful gesture. However, what would it be like to act like we don't believe in anything? Wouldn't that kind of acting be equally justified? A 'fake it til you make it' brand of atheism perhaps, which actually seems to dominate entire circles of postmodern academics.

What is all this about? Maybe I'm working on some sort of account of how true patriotism requires dissent or how true creativity requires nothingness. But it's really not quite so parallel as that. For now, maybe the questions remain: What would a true believer look like? And how could their belief be spoken of without being stained or cheapened or, at the very least, misrepresented? What Zizek puts forth about belief and atheism strikes me as far more radical than the familiar Socratic call to question everything we believe, which will hopefully precipitate deeper understanding by expanding the horizons of what is possible, and so on. Maybe the thesis/antithesis of belief, rather than working itself out in a final (enlightened) synthesis, actually comes to life through its very lack of resolution. Or perhaps the lack of resolution becomes the impetus for the emergence of a whole new set of terms that could describe what real belief actaully is.