The Unveiling

We can imagine the actions of God in a rhythm of two movements, the out-breath, and the in-breath.  The out-breath gives life to the clay, while the in-breath returns Adam to mere dust.

We can further describe this action in terms of hiding and unveiling.  God hides himself--and where does he hide himself--except in Creation.  When God unveils himself, he removes himself from Creation.  Life and Death, the polarity of our world.  The Greek word for this unveiling is the Apocalypse.  Often, in popular culture, the view of the Apocalypse is one of negativity, it is not something we desire.  And we know from the Bible, no one looks on the face of the Lord and lives.

But if we are to be reckoned among the faithful, should we mourn or should we celebrate this unveiling?  Is this a funeral, or the wedding of the Bride to the Bridegroom?

When I was a boy of twelve, I was pedaling my bicycle on a country road, all by myself on a peaceful summer day.  I felt the world, life, freedom, and sense of security and well-being.  Then around the corner came a car.  It left its lane, crossed the yellow line, and came directly at me.  I was riding an over-sized bike, and the shoulder of the road was low, and full of loose sand.  If I went into the shoulder, the bike would get stuck in the sand, and I would fly over the handle-bars.  Moreover, there was nothing to prevent the car from striking me down, helpless, in the sand.  So, while riding as close to the edge as possible, I held my ground, and approached the car.  At the last minute, the car pulled away.  It struck my leg, and I took the driver side mirror off the car with my wrist.

During this experience, my entire perception of the world changed.  All the peace and security and happiness drained out of me, with the realization "Oh my God, I am going to die."  Of course, I didn't die.  I was bleeding profusely, I could barely walk, my bike was smashed, I was alone in the middle of nowhere, but I didn't die.  The next motorist picked me up and graciously brought me to the hospital.  I got stitches, a sprained wrist, a hurt leg, but no broken bones.  But I was broken, set apart, my world had unraveled.

Was this experience bad?  From one perspective, I suppose we would say it was.  It is certainly not something I would wish on someone I loved.  Moreover, it wasn't the first time I was broken, but neither was it the last.  This is our lot in life, big or small, strong or weak, we are broken in the course of human events.  It is part of the rhythm of Life.

When we are young, we believe in the fundamental goodness of our world, of our parents, our caretakers, strangers, everyone and everything.  Then, some experience comes along and shatters this experience.  One possible way to look at this phenomenon is that the world simply sucks.  It is bad, and these experiences we have as a child are simply illusions, perhaps necessary illusions if we are to survive.  I would like to suggest an alternative interpretation.

What we perceive as a child, as an innocent, is nothing more than the out-breath of God, giving us Life, giving us conditions that allow us to grow and thrive.  We interpret this motion as the property of the world, of its inhabitants, of our parents, of strangers, yet these are merely the mode for its expression.  From the beginning, we mistake the Creature for the Creator, and thus we inevitably fall, we are broken, shattered, disoriented.  The world, often quite suddenly, becomes divested of love and security, even sometimes any kind of value.  We see that the world ultimately lacks any meaning or worth in itself, it is nothing more than a carnal butcher shop, life feeding on life in a seemingly eternal cycle of conflict and misery.

I don't believe these experiences are ultimately bad ones, because they reveal the truth of the world.  Our childish view of things was an error, but not because there is no fundamental source of goodness, but because we mistook the world for that source.  The unveiling is an opportunity to view that source of goodness and love more directly, if we are only capable of noticing.  Because the source lies outside the world, rather than despair, we can have hope, because Love can never be destroyed, even if it passes through Death by Dying.

I would like to say that the concept, really the Being of God, cannot be understood divorced from trauma.  God is unveiled in trauma, and in the myriad tales of wars and betrayals and bloodshed, we can discern the Revelation of God, paradoxically, the affirmation of love, beauty, truth and resurrection.  It is only in ourselves being broken, that we can ascertain the unshakeable foundation of the world.

I fear that as a culture we have forgotten the meaning of trauma.  We perceive only that the idol in which we formerly believed has been smashed, irreparably.  We perceive that even if we construct a new idol, and delude ourselves into believing it had value or power or goodness in itself, that in the course of time that idol too would be smashed.  Because God cannot be contained in the world, and the hands of a person cannot construct an image of God.  Unfortunately, instead of jolting us to look upwards, these traumas seem to send so many of us down into the abyss.  Yet evil is only the corruption of the good, just as lies can only be the corruption of the truth.  If the world were wholly evil, there would be no birth, only death.  The word would be divested of all meaning, rendering us mute.  The universe is perpetually winding down from a state of Order to a state of Disorder, with no known physical principal which can restore Order to the universe.  How could the initial conditions of the universe then be possible?  They can only represent the most improbable of miracles.

How do we as a culture deal with trauma?  It seems as if we want to eliminate it.  Yet how can it be so?  Nations war against Nations, that is simply what they do.  Groups fight with other groups.  Individuals do all kinds of cruel and wicked things to each other.  Do we really suppose that these things can be stopped, and stopped without recourse to even greater brutality than that unleashed in the ordinary course of human events?  We fear trauma, and rightly so, and we seek a world where the lion will lie down with the lamb.  Yet what we seek is essentially the re-making of the world in the image and likeness of the Divinity.  It is this endeavor which is completely hopeless from an anthropocentric perspective.  In fact, the world must be destroyed, everything must die, so that the order can be restored to perfection.  Although terrifying, this is a good thing, the best thing, the restoration of our hearts with the true and only source of Love.  The breath must blow in, so that our life force can return to our true homeland.

Dreaming of Freedom

The modern conception of freedom seems to derive its vision from two elements:  i.) individuals are able to choose, ideally infinitely, from various options, ii.) individuals are freed from the consequences of their choices (e.g. if one chooses to be lazy, the state will support you; if you get pregnant as a result of bad short-term decision making, the state will ensure you can get an abortion; if you choose to be an alcoholic or a drug addict, the state should try to assist you or rehabilitate you, while suspending judgment and recognizing that you have a "disease" not something resembling voluntary behavior).  We have the basic idea.

Where does this type of thing happen in the real world?  One can say it doesn't, because actions in the real world always actually have consequences for everyone else, whether direct or indirect.  If the welfare state gets too generous, and people begin to opt out of working, or if through demographic decline, the working age population declines, then the welfare state must be dismantled.  There may be cases (like abortion) where individuals can be shielded from the impact of the choices, but these cases must always be a sub-case, and always in some kind of tension with the rest of the society.

This freedom we are describing does have an environment where we can see it operating, and that is, when we are dreaming.  We can do anything we like in our dreams, and when we wake up, there are no consequences.  What is the difference between dreams and reality?  Dreams only have consequences for the dreamer, but things that happen in reality affect others.  To the extent we are alive, to the extent that we are real, we lack this modern freedom.  To be real, to be alive, is to accept that our actions have consequences on other people, and likewise, that we have a responsibility to other people that can (and should) limit what we choose.  Modern freedom is primarily the freedom literally not to be.

The Secret

The secret, while obvious, remains secret:  everything necessary for the human being to survive and flourish has been already given to us, from the beginning.  Everything beyond this gift amounts to luxury, it is unnecessary, superfluous, and destined to be destroyed and uprooted in the course of time.  The problem today is that in our heedless pursuit of luxury upon luxury we have put aside and neglected what is our essential: the communion of friends, bread and wine, and perhaps a good story told around a campfire.

Object Relations

According to the Wikipedia, object relations theory is explained as follows:

Based on psychodynamic theory, the object relations theory suggests that the way people relate to others and situations in their adult lives is shaped by family experiences during infancy. For example, an adult who experienced neglect or abuse in infancy would expect similar behavior from others who remind them of the neglectful or abusive person from their past. These images of people and events turn into objects in the subconscious that the person carries into adulthood, and they are used by the subconscious to predict people's behavior in their social relationships and interactions.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_relations_theory

 From the perspective of object relations theory, our ability to have healthy relations to others, to strangers, and perhaps even our enemies, is dependent on having healthy relations in infancy and early childhood with our parents.  The relationship of love is always personal, and distinct from the love of things.  We love who the other person is, and not merely, or even primarily, what they are.

For example, a baby loves their mother, but "motherhood" is a role.  Babies do not love "mothers" nor do they love "motherhood"--they have no way of conceptualizing these abstract concepts at an early age.  No doubt they like milk, and having their diaper changed, and the like, but they love their mother, and are bonded to their mother.  If you take a baby, say ninth months old, and suddenly take mom completely out of the picture, and put another competent care giver in the picture (perhaps even a more competent care giver), you cause emotional problems to the baby, which may manifest in emotional problems later in life.  Love begin in an I-Thou relationship.

Now if we are Freudian, and we see people as more or less organic machines, then object-relations becomes a prophesy.  If in early childhood the child has bad parents, or a bad relationship to the parents (however virtuous they may be), then they are destined to have bad relationships in adulthood to others--and this very well could be the case.  But if we are to hold out hope, that human beings in human relationships must be healed, then it may be important to craft an ideal, the ideal parent, who demonstrates total sacrifice and total love for the child.  Strangely enough, through this relationship to the ideal parent, the child may come to heal relationships with the less-than-ideal but actual parents, and well as the less-than-ideal but actual strangers in the world of the grown adult.  Moreover, while ideals are nice, they are bloodless.  Better than the ideal but abstract parent would be the ideal but actual parent, who's example we might imitate.  By entering into relationship with this person, we may be able to heal our suffering and live better lives.  The draw back to this approach is that our ideal but actual parent might die--this could only possibly work as a cultural system if the ideal parent did not die, or if they died, they were resurrected.

Of course, this sort of thing is impossible, and we would regard such talk, or the belief in such talk, as foolish.  But on the other hand, what if it worked?  What if people were able to experience inner transformation as a result of the cultivation of such a relationship?  Would we say that we witnessed a miracle, or are such people merely queer in the head and deluded?  Do they "know" something the rest of us do not, or are they "ignorant" of the real facts?  I don't think it is mine to say for another how they should or should not take these matters.

On the other hand, going back to my previous post on grammar, I should like to tie together the point that it is only out of the "I-Thou" relationship, a relations between persons who know each other, that it is possible to have relations with a "I-he" or "I-she"--proper relations between people who do not know each other, at least very well.  In these second type of relationship, the factor of what the person is (friend, stranger, enemy), not who the person is, predominates.  Thus, we find in Matthew, Chapter 22, Verses 36-40 the following exchange:

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
  
It is clear in this passage that the primary relationship, the greatest and most important relationship, is an "I-Thou" relationship.  It is only on account of this first relationship that love--a love infused with personalty--is possible in the second kind of relationship, between "I-neighbor".  Without this first relationship, the temptation to reify and objectify the neighbor becomes too strong, and the neighbor (stranger/enemy) becomes de-humanized and reduced to an "it".  It has been claimed by some that the first relationship can be dispensed with, one only needs to love one's neighbor, and everything will be okay.  This is a fair statement, but the problem it faces is that it presumes that "love" is something a human being does naturally, perhaps turns on like a light switch.  In my limited experience of the human condition, it seems to me that actual love of another person, especially a stranger or an enemy, is about the most unnatural thing humanly possible.  That is to say, love is a skill that has to be learned, and is perhaps the most difficult of all skills to master.  Perhaps your actual parents were perfect, and you can effortlessly imitate their example.  My actual parents were not perfect, and even so, I still find it is quite difficult to imitate their best examples.  Imitating their vices doesn't seem to present me with anything near the same difficulty.

Grammar

If we look at Piaget's work, it is clear that the child's sense of self develops out of its relationship with its mother.  Children very early begin to identify faces, and begin to recognize familiar faces.  The first correlations the child likely puts together are the correlations between the child's sensations (hunger, fear, discomfort, wonder, happiness) and the face of the mother in response.  Only much later, when the sensations and the experience of the mother are established in memory, will the child begin to express emotions in language.  Not doubt the child may be exposed to a mirror, but no mirror is necessary for the child to develop normally.  In some sense, empathy stems from earliest infancy, as the child identifies his or her emotions with the response in the face of the mother.

It is clear that the first and the second person tenses evolve in tandem in the toddler.  The child can express their emotions in language, because the child can express these emotions in behavior.  The child can empathize with the second person, because they have learned to associate their sensations with the face of the other.  In this sense, "I" cannot be understood divorced from "you".

Now the third person is an interesting development.  In learning words, the parent teaches the child how to use conventions, perhaps pointing out the names of crayons, and asking the child to name the color of the crayon.  In this way, the child picks up a set of authoritative conventions, and once the child has mastered these conventions, the child can begin to attempt to construct descriptions.  Note that in learning not just to name, but to describe, the child can struggle even if they more-or-less understand the conventions.  Describing does not simply happen automatically, first a child needs to learn how to describe, just as the child needs to learn how to name.

Out of these descriptions, a new tense emerges, the third person, which can be personal (he/she) or impersonal (it).  It is important to acknowledge that what we describe is not given in experience.  It is only when experience is combined with a certain type of linguistic training that something can be described.  Moreover, our descriptions of the world are based on the agreement of the first and the second person.  Unless they can agree, there is no true description of anything.

What is necessary for the impersonal world to exist is not the truth of a philosophical metaphysics, be it realism or idealism.  What is necessary is an agreement in conventions and an agreement in descriptions.  In this sense, the real world drops out of the equation.  The so-called "real world" does not have to exist, so long the community agrees on its description of the "real world".  In fact, invocation of the "real world" only comes into the equation when there is a dispute between or over descriptions.  In terms of Platonism, what we can know is language, and this knowledge is based on interpersonal agreement.  If we switch to a more Wittgenstein take, what we cannot doubt is language, and our agreement is the sign of the absence of doubt.

If we consider the case of an apprentice and a carpenter measuring a board before a cut, we can imagine the apprentice measuring and marking the board at the point of the intended cut.  We can imagine the carpenter then measuring the board to test the judgment of the apprentice, and either accepting it or correcting it.  In this endeavor, the carpenter is on the face of things correct in his or her measurement, by definition.  I suppose in some extraordinary situation (say the ruler slips and the apprentice points this out), the authority of the carpenter's measurement can be called into question.  Yet the general authority of the carpenter, in most circumstances, cannot be brought into question without ending the apprenticeship.

What is important to understand is that the sensations that both the carpenter and the apprentice experience are private.  We cannot see through the eyes of either person, anymore than they can see through our eyes.  The agreement is not in the realm of sensation, the agreement is based on what the two persons do and what the two persons say.  What unifies people is not an impersonal "real world" but the unity of persons in activity.

In the old days, people spoke of materialism.  Today, people speak of naturalism, having given up on developing any cogent definition of what matter is in a quantum world.  Naturalism, in its essence, is the claim that first person expressions and second person expressions can be reduced to third person descriptions.  For example, the assertion "I am in pain" can be reduced to a third person statement about the physical condition of an organ.  Note that this is very different from a correlation between a first person sensation and an experience of a second or third person.  Specifically, the correlation is between a sensation and a facial expression.  To live in the universe of naturalism is to live in a universe that has no face, that never really smiles or frowns.  This is perhaps the attraction of naturalism to some.  It is important to note that the face expresses emotions.  A face is not an emotion, but the meaning of our emotional concepts cannot be severed from facial expressions.  We can--hypothetically--imagine a person who experiences emotions, but who is incapable of expressing them.  However, we cannot imagine the human species communicating as it does if everyone lacked this expressive capacity.

Because the face expresses emotions, and emotions cannot be divorced from their bodily expressions, we can see the claim that pain is "really just" a brain state is abject nonsense.  There may be a correlation between a brain state and an emotional display, but we are less wrong if we claim that emotions are just a facial expression.  I say this because we master the use of emotional concepts in connection with facial expressions, almost never in connection with brain imagery.  If human beings didn't have facial expressions, I don't mean to deny that they might not have emotional concepts.  However, the meaning of the those concepts would be different, and what is an emotional concept divorced from what it means?   Likewise, the idea that emotions are "really just" brain states radically alters the meaning of emotions.  This is perhaps the attraction of reductive materialism to some.

What is naturalism as a philosophy really?  It is the claim that first and second person expressions can be reduced to third person impersonal statements:  "It puts the lotion on its skin."  Empirical science no doubt rests on the capacity of persons to agree on third person impersonal descriptions, and to formulate correlations between historic states of systems.  Perhaps there is characteristic neural activity, and then facial expressions.  But this empirical science forgets what it rests on:  a system of linguistic conventions, and practices that are transmitted inter-personally and historically.  Without these social conventions, and this social training, the scientific description would be meaningless.

What is the source of the "I"?  Grammar.  What is the source of the "you"?  Grammar.  What gives these concepts meaning?  Our collective forms of life.  If an extraterrestrial observed the brain states of a human being, not knowing our language, and perhaps having different means for expressing affective states, there is no reason why the extraterrestrial would suppose the human being is in pain.  After all, we say that ants are in pain because if you shine the sun on them with a magnifying glass they move in the other direction.  The reason we say this is there is a correlation between their behavior and our behavior (if you shine the sun through a magnifying glass on our arm, or in our eyes, we jerk away).  If no such correlation existed, we would not be able to apply our concept to the ants.  Note the imputation is made not on the basis of a physical state of a thing, but rather through the correlations between the behaviors of two different unitary organisms.

Animals are, as we say, self-moving.  The organism moves itself, without direct input from the external world.  In contrast, a rock will only roll if something rolls it.  A person smiles, a brain, a part of a whole, does not.  Traditionally, Western Civilization spoke of the soul, or the animate principal, because they observed a unified being.  While a symphony requires a conductor, the conductor cannot conduct without the conscious cooperation of the orchestra.  The symphony is a harmony that emerges through the cooperative synergy of the many players.  Likewise, what the body expresses is not a state of the body's organ, but the expression of a unified being.  That is to say, the universe must really have a face, at least in these parts,

It is clear that we cannot understand the meaning of the First Person except through the visible form of the Second Person.  It is further clear that the Third Person cannot emerge without the agreement of the First Person and Second Person.  Moreover, the Third Person, Impersonal, cannot be understood except as the passive form upon which the First Person, the Second Person, and the Third Person, Personal act in harmony.  Because the First Person, the Second Person, and the Third Person are only known through their mutual and harmonious activity, they are ultimately unknowable in themselves, they cannot be separated.  Moreover, because they are not divisible, they cannot be understood as one in number.  If they were one (as materialism would suppose), then their individuality would collapse.  Neither one nor three, but the source of all numbers, all meaning, all persons, all unity, and all description.  Our grammar expresses the mystery of Life.   

Beauty, Truth, Goodness

All desire finds its root in beauty, the desire to become, to consume, or to unite with the beautiful.  Thus, culture derives its origin in a common apprehension of beauty, across persons, across time, pulling these various individuals into a unity over generations.  Beauty forms the character of the beloved, and the beloved becomes the mirror of the beautiful essence it embodies.

Beauty expresses itself in many facets, there are many cultures after all, many schools of art, each developing organically from a common source of inspiration, however indefinable.  The beautiful is, of course, the source and the basis of the individual's submission, for the individual to put other things aside in order to chase after the beautiful.  In this sense, beauty is the source of truth, of meaning, for which the individual gladly lays down other things, perhaps even their life, for the preservation of this beauty.  These little deaths pay homage to the glory, the magnificence of the Beautiful.  One saves, and hordes, and calculates, only to lay it all down, madly, without thought, to waste all that one has accumulated.

Education, in a traditional sense, is about teaching what cannot be taught.  It amounts to pointing out to youth what is beautiful, what is most beautiful in the eyes of their elders.  But the pupil cannot see through the eyes of their elders, and so can never be forced to see, they can only be provided with the opportunity to discover for themselves. Will they to see the True Light?  And it is indeed not assured that they will see, or if they see, whether it will be apprehended more or less dimly.  Yet if the Light of Beauty is apprehended, and the youth are inspired, they will flourish and carry on the traditions of their elders, and society will thrive.

The Beautiful provides the basis of orientation and direction of activity.  In this sense, it is True, in that it inspires, directs and organizes the collective.  The Beautiful is also Good, in the sense of an end or telos to which the collective strives.  Through the apprehension and inspiration of the Beautiful, the human beings strive to create, to reproduce its beauty, becoming the image and likeness of the Beautiful as far as is humanly possible.

The key to the destruction of culture, in fact, the destruction of all cultures, is through the fragmentation of the Beautiful, the True and the Good.  For example, the fragmentation between the Beautiful and the True can be provided by attributing the Beautiful to subjectivity, and Truth to objectivity.  If this move is successful, then the Good itself disappears, and life becomes divested of meaning, absurd.  One decides on one's own beauty, one's own good, which is absurd because the good, virtue, presupposes the existence of a moral community with shared norms.  For example, scientific inquiry is centered around social institutions composed of multiple people acting in accordance with shared norms and practices.  How is science possible without the existence of agreement on intersubjective norms and customs as much as intersubjective agreement on judgments of fact?  If beauty is only in the eyes of the elders, what then do the pupils see?

Extraterrestrial Encounter at the Football Game

As a hypothetical, let's imagine an extraterrestrial from a distant world travels to Earth and invisibly observes a football game.  The extraterrestrial has no knowledge or background, and is merely observing the football game, having no idea it is even a game, or that human beings are even sentient.

In watching the game, the extraterrestrial observes that when certain things (offensive linemen) receive the football, they begin running toward the goal post.  If the extraterrestrial assumes that the extraterrestrial is the only sentient organism in the universe, they will be convinced that they are witnessing some kind of complex mechanism.  Clearly, when certain parts receive a physical signal (the football), the football causes the machine to move up the field toward the goal.  The extraterrestrial notices that as the lineman moves up the field, the machine/offensive lineman seems to be repelled by the presence of defensive players approaching, moving out of the way or avoiding them.  Although the motion of the machine/offensive line man is not completely determined, the offensive lineman seems to move randomly toward the end zone, even accounting for the repulsion caused by the presence of the defensive line men.

Is the extraterrestrial witnessing the behavior of sentient human beings, or is the extraterrestrial witnessing the behavior of complex organic machines?  How could the extraterrestrial tell the two types of processes apart?  Empirically speaking, when the offensive lineman receives the football, it is followed by movement toward the end zone.  Wouldn't the extraterrestrial postulate that possession of the football causes the machine to proceed to the end zone?  In addition, the proximity of the defensive linemen--does this not cause the lineman to avoid the defensive lineman?  How do you distinguish a sentient process (dependent on signs and a socially created system of meaning) from a mechanical process?

In order to have a system based on meaning, we need at least two things:  a system of social customs and organisms with the faculty of memory.  There must be an agreed upon form for doing things, and there must be agreed upon signs that trigger certain behaviors.  We can make a distinction between norms, which are manifest in synergized behavior by organism, and rules, which are formal symbols.  There can obviously be a game, such as an informal game of catch, which function without explicit rules, but presuppose norms.  After all, you must know to catch the ball when it is thrown to you, and you must know to throw it back.  When a player deviates from the norms (in the eyes of the other players), then usually a discussion and an agreement on rules follows--for example, how hard to throw the ball, or what the agreed upon bounds of play are.  This point is important, because it goes in part to demonstrate that normative transgression results in the production of formal rules.  If all people shared the same sense of norms, and all people followed those norms, then there would be no rules. 

We can find this distinction between norms and rules made in Romans Chapter 2 verses 12-16, where St. Paul discusses the Law, which we can equate with rules:

All who sinned apart from the Law will also perish apart from the Law, and all who sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law.  For it is not the hearers of the Law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the Law who will be justified.  When Gentiles, who do not possess the Law, do instinctively what the Law requires, these, though not having the Law, are a Law to themselves.  They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bear witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, accord to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.

The law written in the heart corresponds to norms, whereas the revealed Law corresponds to rules.  One of the perplexities of Wittgenstein scholarship deals with Wittgenstein’s contention that there can be no moral rules.  The Law does not reveal the nature of the Good to us, the Law corrects us, or chastises us when we deviate from the true Good.  If we are truly Good, we need no Law, and if we possess a Law, mere possession or knowledge of the Law does not aid us, it is only if we obey the Law do we gain any benefit.  It is also noteworthy that the Law is only comprehensible because we already possess the true Law in our hearts:  the spoken Law only chastises us back into conformity with the inner Law of our hearts.

Will the extraterrestrial understand that the football match is a game, or will the extraterrestrial view the football match as a mechanical system, with footballs causing people to run up the field and the like?  Unless the extraterrestrial has a system of intersubjective norms similar to those held by the human species, it is not clear that the extraterrestrial will ever be able to comprehend that the match is a football game, and not merely a mechanical system.  But we have to ask, how do we know a football game is a football game?  In some sense, because we possess a similar set of norms as our football players.  What distinguishes a game of football from firing a gun?

First of all, the game depends upon memory, the memory of the players.  But in addition, the game depends upon the players possessing sufficient intellect to learn the game over a certain period of time.  Last, the game depends upon the will of the players, first to learn the game, second to continue to abide by the rules (and the norms) of the game during play.  Without memory, intellect, and will, there can be no football.  Thus, to understand the game is to possess a system of intersubjective norms, and to possess intellect, memory and will.  

What are these intersubjective norms?  Well, first is bears mentioning something that these norms are not:  describable.  Because human beings can coordinate their behavior, they can develop customs and norms.  Because human beings have norms, they can coordinate their speech, and their speech is intelligible precisely on account of the existence of these norms.  Thus, we can have norms without speech, but no speech without norms.  Accordingly, our speech presupposes norms, and manifests our norms, but, being incapable of division from our norms, can never describe what our norms are (their form), while being capable sometimes of explicating the substance of a specific norm is (within a community). 

Because we cannot really describe what our norms are, only their effects, it bears noting that we cannot describe why our norms sometimes differ.  St. Paul seems to suggest that our capacity for intellection has been impaired, confused, and that this can sometimes accuse us (obfuscation), and sometimes excuse us (true ignorance).  The Christian message regarding these norms is expressed in the story of the Fall:  transgression, fall, and then a new form of life, characterized by pain and strife.  It is a description of the effect of the Fall, but not an explanation of how our norms became corruption, because it deals in effects, not causes.  The Fall is unintelligible.

Returning to our discussion of norms and rules, we can see the limits of the Law:  the written Law presupposes a system of norms for it to be intelligible, and the written Law only chastises or returns us to the Law writ in our hearts.  Moreover, only on account of transgression is there a written Law in the first place:  the Law accuses us (the existence of Language accuses us), and disciplines us, but it does not, on its own accord, make us holy.  Moreover, given the fundamental indeterminacy of meaning, it is clear that the written Law, on its own accord, cannot even properly chastise us, because its meaning is ultimately unknowable.  We do not need ethical rules (because we lack the ability to interpret them consistently), we need an ethical example to imitate.  If we are to be good, the Good must reveal itself to us, and we must recognize it as the Good, and follow it.  In this sense, ethics is voluntary, and can never truly be compelled by another person.  This is our liberty, to follow or to reject, and we cannot be forced to follow, we can only be forced to conform. 

Returning to our extraterrestrial, the extraterrestrial must recognize the football players as rational agents, imitating some kind of paradigm, in order for the extraterrestrial to recognize what it is dealing with. 

The question is the following:  we know that human beings play games, have communication systems, follow norms, possess a collective sense of meaning.  Is it possible that the sub-components of the human being also follow norms and possess a collective sense of meaning, for example, the immune system?  Is it possible that life itself is really the manifestation of a system of meaning?