Lazarus in the Multiple: Awakening to the Era of Complexity

by Camaren Peter

Lazarus in the Multiple presents a new philosophy on how to navigate the complex challenges that society faces in the 21st Century. It deploys the biblical “Lazarus” as the everyman of modernity, who is caught between past and present, life and death, and sleep and awakening amidst the humdrum and complexity of the “multiple”. The multiple is the great sea of noise that lies both within and without Lazarus, from which social reality is born. In this casting, Lazarus is unable to distinguish the signal from the noise and hence remains trapped within enduring ritual and an unfulfilled existence. He is unable to find expression and take actions to bring about meaningful change within himself or in the world around him.

Genres: Philosophy

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 2016

Reviews

[Chris Via]

Bravo for this "theory of how to negotiate the past, present and the future using a wholly new framework of thought" (106). The first thing that struck me about Camaren Peter's little treatise of "evorevolution" (as he terms it), is that of finding in the text a sort of kindred spirit. I don't pretend that I possess the caliber of critical acumen put on display by Peter, but everything from the structure of the text ("...a philosophical discussion in the form of an assemblage" (viii)) to the metaphors to the progression of the thought threads reminded me of the way I write. In fact, I feel that my book Illuminating Human Experience in Literature: A Psychoanalytic Framework was written very much in the same mode as this book, though my goal and the length of the text were much different. Recently I had even considered a little project based on Descartes's method of doubt as a means to truth for a proposal to Zero Books (Peter's publisher). Well, wouldn't you know it; this book ends with a meditation on that very Cartesian topic! Again, though, I do not mean to imply that I am on Peter's intellectual level--his philosophizing is sober and his writing is tight. Perhaps, in the end, it is just the form of an assemblage that strikes such a chord with me.

Here are the bits I took away:

- "To forgive is to abandon the self-narrative of victimhood." (11)

- "The improvisationalist must know the rules in order to break the rules...." (23)

- "The lords of scientific pragmatism and reason remain arrogantly sane among the madness of the multiple, but are often shown to be fools." (25) [I highlighted this because I found it more biting and person than the rest of the cool text. It also happens to be unsupported; there is no evidence of reasoning of the claim of "often shown to be fools." The context is a point that, within the multiple, you can't depend on some airtight scientific method, and only the "masters" can thrive in the multiple.]

- "My appeal is that you seek more deeply to understand those positions you might disagree with most." (45) [This is a position I've held nearly all my life. I also like Amy Hungerford's comment in her Yale lecture on the American novel after 1945: "I don't read to learn who I am; I read to learn who I am not" (paraphrase).]

- "The antecedent to evil is the inability to think from another perspective or to 'put oneself in another's shoes,' so to speak." (60)