Girard, McLuhan & Need for Contemplation

Modern man needs a deep anchor within oneself in order not to be entirely at the mercy of mimetic desires running amok. More specifically, we need contemplation that would at the minimum desensitize us somehow to the whirl of negative mimesis that is our portion, or, more positively, that would give us a sense of presence of a model of positive mimesis. Obviously for Christians this model would be the model, namely Jesus Christ, our transcendent or vertical and at the same time innermost mediator, present in our heart. Innermost mediation is nothing but the imitation of Christ, which is our way to conversion.

Rene Girard as literary critic has scrutinized some of the greatest European novels as conversion narratives, leading their mired in mimetic rivalries protagonists to love and humility, the paramount values of the Christian tradition. But are we condemned with them to arrive at true conversion only at the end of the line, thus essentially not having to worry about how to make it stick during our earthly existence? Well, Christianity has always had to offer a means to ground conversion, namely the way of contemplation. To give ourselves a chance to make our conversion stick we need to resort to contemplative prayer on a daily basis.

But positively mimetic Christian contemplation? What kind of oxymoron is that? Regardless of what the ultimate mystical experience consists in, the whole question actually boils down to whether there is any sensual mediation and residue thereof in a state of contemplation. And if there is any, whether that residue could then imbue our life beyond periods of formal contemplation.

The issue, on the one hand, is taken to the limits by the Buddhists who claim that (what the West is wont to call) contemplation in its uttermost degree is actually pure awareness. Awareness of what?  Of the basic emptiness or transitoriness of existence. (Some Buddhists call it, paradoxically, fullness, while still others, “suchness.”) To be able to credibly claim that they posit a sixth sense, that of consciousness/mind. It is asserted that in a state of pure awareness, mediated as it is by this sixth sense, there is no input as such experienced from any of the five regular senses, or it has to be fully transcended through seeing into its "unreality." The insight that is being gained into this true nature of things is embedded in the mind. Part of it is also the realization that one's mind has always been one with the Universal Mind. (Currently this sixth sense is also rendered as "heart," in recognition that the underlying Buddhist term carries much broader connotations.) This is supposed to go hand in hand with total extinguishment of desire, so at one stroke one obtains a foothold in a state where there is no basis whatsoever for any mimesis, Girardian or otherwise. This experience is then supposed to pervade one’s waking state or regular existence: one should be “mindful” of this basic emptiness at all times. Consequently Girard calls Buddhism nihilistic.

As far as Christian contemplation is concerned, on the other hand, usually no claim is made that there is no residue of any sense input in such a state. Dom Thomas Keating, co-formulator of centering prayer, says that contemplation may arise from a sacred word, breath, glance, or from the spiritual sense of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching, depending mostly on one’s physical makeup but also on one’s cultivated form of spirituality. One of the favorite images of/metaphors for Christian contemplation is “sense of presence.” What or who is present? For contemplatives such as Teresa of Avila and many others it is Jesus Christ. And with regular practice one might arrive at an enduring sense of presence that is then able to imbue the waking state of the contemplative and thus become the foundation of mimesis and mimetic desire. With Jesus as model/mediator this innermost mimesis, and desire, is entirely positive.

What does deep anchoring in a Christian contemplative state actually mean in terms of spiritualized sensation? Is this sense of contemplative presence more “tactile” rather than mediated by other senses, as the name approximating it might suggest? Firstly, a distinction must be drawn between how one arrives at contemplation, on the one hand, and what is that person’s contemplation like, on the other. The former is much more easily qualifiable than the latter. But since there is expected to be some connection or continuity between the two, we might be able to make assumptions of the one based on the characteristics of the other.

Prerequisites for attaining to a contemplative state include immersing oneself in silence (the most important sensory requirement) and in darkness (for example by means of closing one’s eyes). The other senses are normally not mentioned because it goes without saying that they are to be shut out. With the mind it is different. First of all it is considered as problem by many contemplative traditions, meaning that the overflowing content of consciousness is acknowledged as something to be necessarily dealt with in one way or another. Whence it comes? If it is experienced through the agency of regular senses (e.g., a pang of pain mediated by the tactile sense), in principle there is no problem. But what if it comes of itself, seemingly not mediated by any regular sense (e.g., fearful rumination that might follow the initial pain sensory input)? One is supposed then to simply observe that material using the faculty (or one’s sixth sense) of pure awareness, while simply  letting go of it.

In a traditional Christian setting one often arrives at a contemplative state via meditation which in actuality may consist in listening “internally” to a mentally repeated phrase like “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” or simply, “Jesus.” Although to attain to contemplation one has to leave aside or transcend this mantra, yet for many meditators-cum-contemplatives it may linger even into what would be regarded as a legitimate contemplative state. It is then this person’s contemplative “sound of silence,” and as such may accompany his/her sense of divine Presence; whereas any lingering vision, including that of a deity, should have been abandoned much earlier. Incidentally, for many Eastern Orthodox Christians these “sounds of silence” are expected to accompany the meditator also during his/her “waking” hours for one to be judged truly spiritually advanced (vide the classic book The Way of a Pilgrim.)

So in Christian contemplation it is both the tactile (a rather nondescript yet palpable sense of presence) and (many a time) the auditory that are acknowledged, while the visual is dismissed (in the sense of a distinct vision: ecstasy is not what contemplation is about; some people though experience bathing in pure light.)

The above characterization of contemplation, or more broadly, of our spiritual path that relies on contemplative prayer, takes on special significance for our regular life when we allow ourselves to call on analyses of Marshall McLuhan, the preeminent scholarly commentator on the media and their impact on humans. Why can it be important and significant? Because his thought goes a long way towards accounting for change in man effected by technology (especially the media) and the burden it creates for the human senses and mind. We can still use his vision, formulated several decades ago, to understand many otherwise meaningless or obscure phenomena pervasive in media-dominated Western society, as well as predict what is coming our way. 

His “global village” is now finally taking shape with the overwhelming advent of the digital media (which make use of all the preceding media as the digital’s many “backgrounds,” or “grounds,” as he calls them, rather than "figures," as those media are not themselves objects of attention.) They allow each and every one of us to “produce” ourselves in as many various ways and forms as we want to see us portrayed (through photos, films, manifestos, music, whole life stories, etc.), and then – thanks to the media’s  another most significant mode, that of interactivity, offering the possibility of making it all available to any and all, for the first time in history – to sell this “product” of ours (we as product!) to the whole planet, if that’s what our desirous yet vacuous imagination wants, or to a tailor-made circle of targets. And duly receive in return the same from those to whom we are digitally peddling our stuff. Which in turn makes us reciprocate with more (and, hopefully, better) of the same, and the digitally mediated whirl of mimetic rivalry is getting more and more involving and powerful. Our mimetic rivals obviously are in the same boat just trying as we are to stay afloat, all of us leading a double vicarious life of self-deception.

Nothing of the sort would be possible were it not for the all-pervasive all-interconnecting digital media. Now McLuhan posited that the media in general speed up our evolution by actually being “extensions” of the human sensory apparatus, of the central nervous system that includes the brain itself. Our mind is then seen as a culturally and historically evolved form of sensation. (Are we not close to Buddhist thought here?) And precisely on account of this effect McLuhan made a claim that the media are themselves the message. They imperceptibly “massage” users and are in a way more important than their content. He went on to say that users are the real content of the media because the media shape them in accordance with their logic. And while he missed and never focused on the role of mimetic desire in man, including, and preeminently so, as mediated by the “implosive” mass media of our time that he investigated, his theory nevertheless continues to be of help also with regard to understanding which senses come to play bigger and bigger role with each ascendant mass medium, and what it means for human consciousness and the overarching sense of self, the very self that Rene Girard has shown so convincingly to be ineluctably mimetic.

It goes without saying that the impact of the media on man is not only beneficent, as the above description of negative mimesis clearly illustrates. While being fully aware of that, McLuhan nevertheless also claimed that “under electronic conditions” the Christian concept of the mystical body of Christ with all men as its members becomes technologically a fact. Somehow in line with this notion tactility is believed to be the primary sense for the digital media, with the visually-based media forming one of its “grounds.” This subsumption of vision under tactility may be leading us ultimately towards a more "hands on" approach to life, since McLuhan regarded sound and touch as affording a more intuitive and realistic though subjective grasp of the universe, and certainly less illusory than vision with its apparent yet misleading “objectivity.” 

If the above holds true, our mimetic nature is being evolutionarily enhanced, and at the same time overwhelmed, by the digital mass media of today. It is obvious then that man is in urgent need for true spiritual grounding and anchoring in order to thrive or even survive. Christian contemplation must become a crucial part of man’s spiritual pilgrimage aiming as it does at returning to harmony with oneself (or, these days, with one’s unhinged self) by means of getting back in touch (tactile Presence!) with the divine, while maintaining a listening receptivity to God’s word. The universe we intuitively grasp then is anchored within our hearts, and from that vantage point we are better able to see negative mimetic desires for what they are. We just might be able to substitute for them those consistent with the promptings of our positive model/mediator and to see our neighbor and the whole universe through the eyes of compassion and mercy, through His eyes. To free ourselves from enslavement to mimetic rivalry so that we could live in the freedom of the only positive mimetic desire there is, in the freedom of loving mimesis, in imitatio Christi.