14. Born and raised in the Netherlands in a family that served as part of the underground resistance to Hitler’s pogrom, Willem Frederik Zuurdeeg (1906–1963) spent his life asking how Western civilization’s most sophisticated culture (Germany), could fall so easily into the hands of a madman.
15. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 1:191–92.
16. Ibid., 195.
17. Ibid.
The Common Ground Beneath the Gun Debate
Who can endure permanently Plato’s uncertain, unsafe balance on the brink of the abyss of chaos?
—Willem Zuurdeeg18
If ninety-nine percent of reality is perception, analytical philosopher Willem Zuurdeeg argued that perception is the expression of something deeper and far more powerful.
Zuurdeeg, author of An Analytical Philosophy of Religion and Man Before Chaos: Philosophy Is Born in a Cry, spent his life listening to human speech for what lay beneath the surface of the language.
Homo loquens (“man-who-speaks”) is homo convictus (“man-who-is-convicted/convinced”), the creature who establishes her/his finite existence in time by powerful, unshakeable convictors who anchor us against the chaos.
What we often describe as irrational speech, is, in fact, “convictional language,” the hidden power of which can only be understood by a kind of “situational analysis, i.e., the life “situation” (historical-convictional context) of the one who is speaking. Our varying perceptions are determined by the less conscious hidden convictions of implicit needs and unquestioned cultural traditions.
What is missing in the national debate is public expression of the nonrational perceptions of the word “gun” and the unspoken convictions that shape our different perceptions.
We not only hear the word “gun” differently; we hear different things differently.
Until we come together to discuss what we hear when we hear the word—our nonrational (not unrational, as in opposed to reason, but nonrational, as in beneath the presumptions of reason) convictional worlds—the gun debate will be a shouting match that finds no common ground.
A simple exercise of word association demonstrates the difference.
Say the word “gun” and listen for what it evokes in the hearer. In the ears of some, the word means safety and protection. In the ears of others, it means without protection or threat.
But if we listen carefully to the apparently opposite responses, we discover a common ground they share: The threat of insecurity. The threat of chaos.
Whenever we hear a scream, something powerful is under assault. Chaos threatens. We cry out against the chaos. We cry out against death and extinction.
In Man Before Chaos, Zuurdeeg claims that, from its very beginning, Western culture has been bound up with a powerful dread of chaos. Even Plato’s philosophy, argues Zuurdeeg, is born of a cry.
Socrates has died. He himself does not fit very well into Athens’ political life. He is naked and defenseless and is not ashamed of it. He has the courage to cry against chaos and for Being and Goodness. All this has been smothered by the comfortable, although often quarrelsome, classical and medieval philosophy and theology. Who can live by a cry? Who can stand to hear such disturbing noise? Clear and calm reasoning under the guidance of venerable old philosophical schools (or just as respectable church fathers) enables us to live, make church and civilization possible. Who can endure permanently Plato’s uncertain, unsafe balance on the brink of the abyss of chaos? By what does a man live? By a cry? Claims? The careful and broad elaboration of philosophy? All of them?”19
In the current debate about guns, the life situations, cultural traditions, and life experiences of the hearers are “worlds” apart. Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . if we could find the space to listen more deeply to our different cries in the face of chaos, we would find the common ground of homo convictus, and move to something deeper than the shouting.
18. Zuurdeeg, Man Before Chaos, 44.
19. Ibid., 43–44.
Say the Word ‘Freedom’
I may not be able to say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think.And I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than a sycophant or coward on the streets.
—Eugene V. Debs20
My hearing continues to get worse. In the soundproof booth of the hearing test, the audiologist asks me to repeat the words I hear . . .
“Say the word ‘good.’”
“Wood.”
“Say the word ‘cold.’”
“Hold.”
“Say the word ‘gold.’”
“Goal.”
It’s not easy inheriting my mother’s hearing loss. Getting the words wrong often separates me from normal conversation. But it also has its advantages. I listen more carefully, and the world of silence brings me to a deeper reflection about the words we hear every day.
I’ve begun to listen more carefully when the word “freedom” is used.
“Say the word ‘free.’”
“Free,” we say. And something deep within us hears the national anthem: “land of the free, and the home of the brave.”
We Americans love freedom.
Future anthropologists will likely observe that freedom was the most treasured word in the American vocabulary. It is the most powerful word in our language.
No one understands this better than the handlers of political candidates. They know that the word evokes an unspoken reverence and that perceived threats to freedom alarm us and cause us to get back in the ranks of freedom’s faithful. They know the nature of language and of word association.
“Say the word ‘freedom,’” they say.
“Democracy.”
“Say the word ‘regulation.’”
“Socialist.”
“Say the word ‘socialist.’”
“Un-American.”
“Say the word ‘government.’”
“Enemy.”
“Say the word ‘American.’”
“Free.”
Freedom stands alone in the American pantheon.
Ironically, in the hands of the unscrupulous, the word we associate with individual liberty can cause a collective stampede. It calls us from grazing freely in the