If you’ve ever questioned the very foundations upon which your worldview is built, you know what a painful process it can be. I do. I had to completely overhaul my thinking when my daughter was four or five. I had told her, You’re not leaving this table till you eat your peas. She crossed her arms, put on a stubborn face, and refused a single one. I tried to bargain. Just a spoonful and you can be done. She said no. We cleared the dishes, set up a game on the table in front of her, and played with the other kids. She glowered from her seat. Her siblings put on their PJ’s and watched TV out of her line of sight. When we were done, she had fallen asleep in her chair and the dog had his paws on the table, eating her peas. I might have warmed up a new batch of peas and made her sit there all night. I might have tied her to her chair while I went to work the next day. I might have let her starve to death if she wasn’t going to eat her peas. It probably would have taken all that; for, while I didn’t succeed in getting her to eat her peas, I had succeeded in teaching her to be as stubborn as me. Instead, I’m happy to say I just dropped it. We never spoke of the peas in the morning. Then I deconstructed why I was putting so much stock in peas. DeconstructionDeconstruction is a word often used by postmodern philosophers, narrative psychotherapists, and Evangelicals who’ve come to question their religious faith. It means to peel back the layers of texts, artworks, or your own beliefs and assumptions, and scrutinize the underlying structures and power dynamics at play. When I first heard the word, I wondered why they don’t just call it destruction. It sure feels that way. I was horrified at what I had been willing to do for peas and wondered if I could ever trust my own judgment again. I believed in peas. My mother made me eat them. They’re listed by the Food and Drug Administration as a healthy green vegetable, the base of the food pyramid. I believe in giving things like peas a chance and developing a taste for them, even if you initially don’t like them. I believe in respecting the food that’s on your plate. It sacrificed its life for you. The cook went through the trouble and expense to give them to you, so the least you can do is eat them. I also believed parents should have authority over their children, guide them, and instruct them firmly, at times, even when the child resists it. One should not always take the easy way, just because it’s easy. Hence, I believed in eating my peas and making my children eat them. As you can see, those simple peas came loaded with a shipload of meaning. Everything I knew about nutrition, parenting, and leading an ethical life came to bear on a couple of teaspoons of peas. They can’t hold all that without squishing. I had given them much more significance than they deserved. They matter, but they don’t matter that much. Since I was wrong about peas, I didn’t know what to believe in anymore. I had no business trying to be a parent. If you Google deconstruction nowadays, you’ll probably see a lot of posts by people who call themselves Exvangelicals. They’re Millennials and Gen Z’s who were raised in their parents’ conservative Evangelical faith, but have come to question what they were taught about their religion after experiencing homophobia, antiscientism, misogyny, racism, polarized politics, and sexual abuse cover ups in their church. Like me with the peas, they’re horrified and don’t know what to believe anymore. Deconstruction at this stage can be profoundly dispiriting and alienating. It can lead to everything from an outright rejection of all norms to a shut down of hope and will. I’m lucky I didn’t let my deconstruction stop there, where confidence meets doubt and dies. Breaking It All DownThere’s another way of thinking about deconstruction. Deconstruction is what engineers do when they take something apart to see how it’s made. They do it when an enemy’s missile lands in their territory without exploding, so they can build a missile like it on their own. In my case, I analyzed the beliefs that led to my behavior. I would not have gone as far as I did had I not believed in being stubborn. It’s right to be stubborn about things that matter. If I was super stubborn, I would have tied her to her chair for weeks and given her nothing to eat but peas. If she was as stubborn as I, she would have starved to death. I wanted her to eat her peas because it would be good for her health; but if I took it that far, I’d be undermining her health. She refused to eat her peas because she wanted to preserve her autonomy; but how much autonomy would she have if she’d starved to death? It’s clear that eating or not eating peas should never matter that much. The word deconstruction was coined after World War II by the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida as a way to challenge totalitarian fascist and Marxist propaganda. Since then, students of Derrida have used it against a variety of evils by revealing the assumptions, contradictions and hierarchies within those narratives. In my own field, therapist Michael White taught us to use deconstruction to help clients reduce the power of toxic stories by dissecting them to see how they’re made and identify where they came from. Many people come to my counseling practice with beliefs that are ripe for deconstruction. A woman who has a romantic vision of love. A man who believes being right gives him permission to be violent. My office teems with the addicts, the compulsives, the racists, the nationalists, and the enraged couples who are so intent on proving a point to each other, that they destroy their marriages. These are all people who went astray by following something they thought could take them to the promised land, but left them to die in a desert. What is wrong with them all? The same thing that was wrong with me when I made a big deal about peas. Psychology has no good word for it, so I’m going to refashion an old fashioned theological word: idolatry. Yes, that’s right, I had made peas into an idol. By that I mean I had let a couple of teaspoons of peas represent what really matters. My daughter confused not eating peas with what really matters. The evangelical thought the culture wars really mattered. The romantic woman thought romance really mattered. The violent man thought being right really mattered. The addicts thought their drug mattered; the compulsives, their rituals; the racists, their race; the nationalists, their nation; the enraged couples believed the point they were trying to make really mattered. None of it really matters. But what does? What Really MattersThere’s a third way to think about deconstruction. It’s what a seed does to its shell when it sprouts. It deconstructs the husk that surrounds it so it can grow into what it was meant to be. The old belief I had about peas encapsulated so much about health, adaptability, respect, and good parenting that it couldn’t contain it all. A new understanding emerged out of the shambles of the old. I learned what really matters. In the same way, when the exvangelical is critical of his faith, he is refining his faith by removing that which corrupts it. He’s more Christian for having rejected Christendom. By rejecting the vision of love the woman saw on rom-coms, she’s insisting on a deeper version of love. The man can discover that he’s more right when he’s non-violent. The addicts, the compulsives, the racists, the nationalists, the enraged couples can let go of that to which they cling in favor of something more satisfying and true. They can find the promised land on the other side of the desert. Deconstruction clears the site so you have room for something else to grow. I became a better parent after the incident with the peas because I became less stubborn about what I thought mattered and started looking for what really matters. It’s easy for me to say, definitively, what matters, at least what matters to me. It’s impossible for me to say what really matters. Time will tell. Only God knows. Maybe nothing really matters at all. I can’t know what really matters any more than I can know how something came out of nothing and where all this is going. I’d like to know, though. I’ll be forever searching for what really matters, never sure I’ve found it. You might say what really matters is to be stubborn about looking for what really matters, and be stubbornly unsure when you think you’ve found it. For instance, right now, it matters that I find a way to end this essay, so both you and I can do something else. Does it really matter? I guess we’ll have to find out. Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy The Reflective Eclectic, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.
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Monday, 3 June 2024
Deconstruction
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