Pomo Sociology and Christian Interaction

While reading, of all people, Foucault and Judith Butler, I recently came to some interesting conclusions about the social aspect of Christian living. The books I was reading, oddly enough, were Foucault's "History of Sexuality, Vol 1" and Butler's "Gender Trouble." I am by no means a fan of either author (and I agree, for the most part, with one professor's labeling of Foucault as one of the "Four Frenchmen of the Apocalypse"). I must admit, however, that their arguments about social formation and personal identity seem to be, from a sociological, psychological, and sociolinguistic vantage point, fairly "spot on."

The argument, essentially, runs thus: humans have no discernible identity without the larger social environment. As infants we are born into the family unit which is, of course, saturated with expectations, social mores, language, and values that reflect (to varying degrees) the ideology/ies of our society.

This fits with the theories of others--sociologists like Erving Goffman, sociolinguists like Sapir & Whorf, psychologists like Skinner, culture theorists like Althusser, Gramsci, etc. We cannot conceive of a prelinguistic state that is anything other than alien. Language not only gives us the means to relate to others, it becomes so fully integrated that we cannot think (or imagine thinking) as preverbal entities. The human experience, as we conceive it, is NECESSARILY verbal. We may say, thence, that we are social beings at the most internal, fundamental level. This is, of course, basic sociolinguistics.

"Identity" is the mediating of social networks. The individual, as such, does not (appreciably) exist apart from society in anything other than the abstract. There is, I think, an ultimate discrete "self," but it is an essence that can only be understood in its relation to the outer world. This self (or "soul," if you like) is indivisible from the articulations of the neuro-chemical state. Indeed, our relation to it is as difficult to trace as is the connection between the brain and the mind.

Our knowledge of neurology being what it is, we can no longer say that there is a hard-and-fast dualistic split between body and soul. That being said, I do not think a Christian can be a strict materialist (for what would become of the individual in this system without the brain-state to define it?). Materialism requires a strict corporeality and the notion of a continued existence after death requires a spiritual essence apart from the body. So where is all of this leading?

We are composite selves--layered social beings, articulating ourselves in our myriad networks. The types of social environments we choose to occupy, therefore, become increasingly important. No one, to my knowledge, would claim that all networks affect us equally--but the ones with the most impact will be those which we feel strongly tied to. In other words, our sense of "primary identity" is going to be reflected in our core groups. Put yet another way, "bad company corrupts good morals."

We cannot claim that our social networks have no effect. We cannot be Christians if none of our friends are Christians. We cannot be men and women of faith if we forsake the fellowship of believers. We may eat with sinners and "tax collectors," but only if our primary identity is tied to a viable social core of like-minded theists. The Christian walk cannot be an isolated one. For this reason, the Church has always made the weekly gathering essential--to the point that Rome made Sunday mass obligatory and the forsaking of it a mortal sin.

Moreover, as neurology tells us, our memories and moods and most other aspects of our personality are influenced by (if not composed entirely of) the electro-chemical stimuli of the brain-state. The stray aneurysm or head trauma can radically shift our personalities. There are documented cases of people being entirely different after such incidents. Consider the Alzheimer patient. Consider the victim of stroke. The body changes the personality and this is not isolated to these extreme cases.

On a daily basis, our lifestyle shapes our character ON THE CELLULAR LEVEL. We condition our brains in the chemicals we ingest (e.g. omega fats being "brain food," etc.) but also in the habituation of social responses. We are what we eat, then, in the literal and the figurative. They types of social environments we choose to participate in and identify with will nurture certain mindsets which will be reflected in the neural mapping of dendrite and synapse.

I firmly believe that no human is a tabula rasa. We inherit certain biological predispositions and we are each of us born to certain familial expressions ideology/ies. But while our chemical make-up may predispose us to alcoholism or homosexuality or whatever other hot-topic socio-genetic buzz word, each of these predilections is either promoted or repressed by the social environs. It is not nature OR nurture because human nature, as discussed above, does not appreciably exist in a prelinguistic (i.e., non-nurtured way) and nurture (i.e., socialization) is invested on the neurological level.

What this means, at the end of the day, is that nearly every individual eventually reaches an age of personal "social accountability." We are born with certain genetic traits and we are born into ideologized settings. We cannot, however, become fatalistic about it. We become mature enough
to choose the soil in which we'll plant ourselves. It is our duty to surround ourselves with those positive influences which will promote virtue and curtail vice (particularly those toward which we are genetically inclined).

It is a moral imperative to condition the body into an optimal neurological state (as in St. Paul's beating his body into submission) and to also condition our social selves into an optimal state. Both the physical and the social influence the psyche and in so doing condition the soul. Habits are habits regardless of whether they are social, physical, or spiritual.