Genealogy and Self-Understanding
“You don’t know what you believe until you know why you believe.”
Your thoughts are not your own. Most of us today are shockingly ignorant of the source of our beliefs. To not know where your beliefs stem from is to be at the mercy of presuppositions you aren’t even aware you hold. If you do not trace the source of your most deeply held beliefs, you risk living a lie; or worse, taking pride in wisdom you have not earned.
Pride in unearned wisdom is dangerous. You take for granted that you know how to wield it. What do we know about truth? It is often paradoxical, equally generative and destructive. What do we know about navigation? That a deviation of even a single degree made in the beginning can, over the course of a long journey, land one in a completely different place than intended.
Beliefs are couched within systems of belief. Systems of belief are attempts at a cohesive worldview. Without a cohesive worldview, we are left trying to explain things in ways that may contradict, causing psychological stress (or cognitive dissonance, which is honestly worse). In order to keep at bay such stress, and to understand the world, I must ensure that my understanding of the world and myself are coherent and true-enough for survival.
But how can I ever truly know that my belief system is sufficient for survival? I can’t– eventually, thermodynamics will overwhelm me, and I will be relegated to dust. But the application of a coherent belief system along with wisdom allows for the flourishing of human life in so far as that is possible, and so acquiring wisdom will be our first task.
The most immediate wisdom I can generate is knowledge of myself. If I can understand myself with radical honesty, what aspects of human nature will remain mysterious to me?
Ask yourself: who am I? What can kill/hurt/devour me? How can I prevent my early demise? What am I capable of? What must I cultivate in myself? Where am I situated? How do I relate to my environment? Why do I do the things I do? Why am I shaped this way? What am I in control of? What is outside of that control? Who did I come from? Where did I come from?
Genealogy is necessary for self-understanding. I first realized this while reading Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by Rene Girard. What I had not realized until reading Things Hidden was just how central to human nature was mimetic desire and violence. The modern political climate is dangerous for those who desire to think clearly, differently. People faced with the same reality come to two very different conclusions on what constitutes goodness, truth, and beauty.
Before then I was shallowly, culturally christian. I was christian in the same way everyone around me in the American south was christian, which pretty much meant “be a good person.” What I did not realize was how culturally conditioned that idea of being a “good” person was, and how far from the biblical standard our modern conception is.
I did not know anything about the Old or New Testament, except that Jesus was in the New and was “much nicer than mean old God of the OT”. After Things Hidden, as well as after reading the Old and New Testament in their entirety, I began to see how taken-for-granted certain ideas dominating modernity were.
In the Greek and Roman world, strength was essentially the only thing that corresponded to one’s virtuousness. The idea of a transcendent, capital ‘T’ Truth was unheard of– or that humans were made in the image of God, deserving rights (like the right to life), and that all people, whether high or low status, ought to be regarded equally. We don’t seem to fully appreciate this in the modern day. We assume that throughout all of history people were just as civilized as they are now. The rule of law, civil rights, ideas of equality and fairness, sacrality of the individual, modern science– all these innovations are thanks to Christianity.
How could I have ever known this if I weren’t a student of history? Might I have simply seen Christianity in its modern, abysmal state and concluded that this phenomenon was clearly of no relevance? I began to understand that discussions we have today regarding philosophy were started some 2000-3000 years ago, and that we are in some ways no closer to an answer than we were then.
How does this relate to me individually? Well, I am an individual in history, and so for better or worse I am at the mercy of the time I’m born into, with all of its blessings and curses. Were I to avoid the study of history, I might be like a tree with grass roots, liable to be swept up by the wind. If I am to flourish, I must dig my roots deep, reaching toward the unchanging ground of all reality.
In the modern day we have this conception of psychotherapy, and a really important aspect of psychotherapy, at least in Freudian practices, is to understand the first hours, days, and months of a person's life. It’s true that we are born out of a past we cannot remember– a past repressed but nevertheless scarring. To understand this– what those formative moments were, and what your parents were like, and their parents, and their parents– is to move toward self-understanding and wisdom.
Aren’t you the formulation of thousands of years worth of natures being combined and recombined? You are the culmination of all that has survived over many generations, and that survival is never guaranteed. To avoid acknowledging the addictions and vices and sins of the generation before you is to refuse to learn from them and progress beyond them. If I know my lineage suffers from addiction, why wouldn’t I take extra precautions to avoid repeating that same problem? The habits of genealogy run deep. It requires a conscious force of will to break free from what one has been born out of– to reverse the momentum of centuries.
Last week, while rummaging through my parent’s attic, I found my very first camcorder from when I was probably 8 or 9 years old. It was dead. The SD card inside was a special kind that required a unique adapter to read. Knowing there might be footage on there– footage from my first moments of use with a camera– I went online and searched for the unique adapter, bought it, and am now waiting so that I can see if any footage awaits me on the SD.
But why should I be so eager to discover the contents of an old camera? Well, today I am a professional cinematographer. I have made my living with my ability to operate a camera; manipulating scenery and light and settings in order to produce visuals, emotions, and narratives that other people pay for with their time, attention, and appreciation. To discover the contents of my first experiences with a camera would be in some sense to see the kernel from which a flourishing tree would come to grow. It would, in short, contribute to a sort of science of self-understanding.
Inscribed upon the temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi was the phrase “Know Thyself.” To not know oneself is to be dead the whole time one is living. Enlightenment, in so far as it is a reality, must consist of a total understanding of what one is; where one has been, where one stands, and where one is going. I suppose one would never be alone if only he were to make his own acquaintance.
