Plastic People

The title of this blog site reflects a long-standing interest in notions of plasticity which has several sources.  But before I mention those, I should say why I think the notion of plasticity is important, or at least interesting.  The idea of plasticity is about the human capacity to change, a capacity which is not, however, infinite.  As philosopher Catherine Malabou argues (What Should We Do With Our Brain?), plasticity is not some completely amorphous malleability.  In other words, if you and I have natures that are plastic, that means that they can change, but it does not mean that they are simply passive receptacles for whatever influences befall us or whatever disciplines are imposed on us.  Rather, as Malabou suggests, plasticity invokes the thought of (plastic) explosives.  Our particular identities, along with our human nature itself, contain within themselves surprising and world-transforming resources that make them “agential” or active rather than simply passive.

Why is that important?  I suggest it is because if we have a human nature that does not simply adapt to external circumstances but contains within itself its own dynamism, then that which makes us human inevitably pushes back again regimes of domination or discipline (including, for the theologically minded among you, sin).  But of course, it doesn’t push back for the sake of an aimless freedom.  That’s the other side of plasticity.  To say that we have a plastic nature is still to say that we have a nature: there are some types of things that are fulfilling (classically, we call them “goods”) and others that, while perhaps enjoyable, are ultimately stultifying (“evils”).  Plasticity can take from classical Christian natural law tradition the notion of natural human ends, without making them static and inflexible.  It is a historicized way of interpreting human nature, in other words:  we have ends that are natural to us, but those ends are the products of a history that is still moving.  That is to say, what is good and what is evil for us can actually change--not just because of  changing contexts, but also because of changing ways in which we are put together.  "Tastes" are a good, if superficial, example:  green beans taste good to me as an adult, and thus they are not only good for my health but they are now an aesthetic good as well.  I take it that worship practices in churches may also serve to illustrate this. Music that once affected us one way (say, awe-inspiring) now affects us in another (say, comfort-inducing).  Both, we might say, are good, but we can enter into a conversation about what good is better (or whether the lesser good may actually be a kind of evil!), given the ends of corporate worship as we now understand them.

So what are the sources for (my own) thinking about human plasticity?  First, the plasticity of the brain, or neuroplasticity.  We now know a couple of very important things about human nature.  First, it is an expression of the workings of an enormously complex network of neurons that make up the central nervous system.  Whatever we identify as “natural” for human beings in terms of behaviors, desires, or inclinations will be represented by some set of neural pathways.  But second, and more importantly, these pathways are never completely “hardwired.”  In other words, the connections between neurons that form the basis of who we are both in general (human nature) and in particular (personal identity) are susceptible of change. The brain, we have learned, constantly rewires itself, as new connections are formed in response to new experiences.  This means that new desires can be created, or new associations between certain external stimuli and certain internal motivations can emerge.  This is largely how advertising in a consumer-driven economy works—we have to learn to want new things. But, thankfully, since it is a matter of the brain re-wiring itself (recall Malabou’s point) rather than being simply re-wired by external forces, we have agency, and responsibility, even here.

A second source is quite different.  I am indebted to Kathryn Tanner (Christ the Key) for putting me on to this one: Gregory of Nyssa’s account of human nature as indeterminately open.  Tanner actually uses the word “plasticity” to describe Gregory’s argument that human nature is to have no nature. For Gregory, as created in God’s image we human beings are oriented toward the infinite.  Nothing finite satisfies our desire for God, but we can “fill” ourselves with creaturely preoccupations so that that desire is stifled.  What we choose to fill ourselves with, according to Gregory, is what constitutes our nature.  We either become entangled in sin, and consequent mortality, or we become divinized.

On the face of it, Gregory’s account is surely an exaggeration:  to say in effect that we choose our nature flies in the face of what we now know about the evolutionary origins of human beings, but also of what we have long known on the basis of human experience.  But this is where Tanner’s use of the idea of “plasticity” is interesting, especially if we give it a Malabouan twist.   Perhaps it is best to interpret Gregory’s point as saying that the nature of human beings is to have a desire for the infinite, a desire that is productive and not simply passive.  As Calvin urged much latter, the human heart is a factory of gods.  The desire for the infinite bursts through mundane, utilitarian calculations about the use values of objects and invests some thing or things with ultimacy.   But, not letting Gregory’s point get swallowed, it is not a matter of indifference which objects are so invested.  If the “idol” is worshiped, our brains are wired accordingly and we come to desire the wrong things, things that do not satisfy and do not keep us open to the infinite.  If the “icon” (drawing this distinction from Jean-Luc Marion) is revered, then we are constantly ushered into the open spaces of eternity, because it is the nature of the icon not to allow our vision to rest upon it but to point beyond itself.  So, our plasticity has to do with our primordial openness to the infinite and also with the dependency of that openness upon objects of attention that do not close it.  Thus there are both active and passive components to plasticity:  a desire and a dependence; a transcendence and a creaturely limitation; an indeterminacy and a boundedness.

This duality (not dualism!) has to do not only with religious artifacts and ritual practices, but also with economic, social, and political transactions.  Our plasticity means that it is in our capacity to resist foreclosure of our relations to God and neighbor, to push back against stultification of our natures in the invisible hands of cruel, inhuman market forces, but also that we need mechanisms and institutions within which to live in order to preserve and to realize the possibilities for true human flourishing.  We need education, and systems of distribution, and functional political processes, or else the resplendence of the idols becomes all too glaring, and we are lured into the darkness of a gilded age.

Plasticity, as I understand it, is an account of the freedom of the human creature before God—not unlimited, not arbitrary, but also dynamic rather than static.  I’ve left a number of loose threads here, but this gives an idea at least of why I think it is important that we human beings are plastic people.