Habits, Gender and Judith Butler

By Wayne Brown
The Canadian Series, Ideas lately had a great program on habits. Of course, anyone intent on self-improvement will want to understand habits.

The program is interesting because it pushes out the boundaries of what we think about habits themselves. For example, it introduces us to Judith Butler, the prolific and articulate American philosopher and gender theorist who considers gender to consist (mainly?) of habits.

This is all particularly relevant to students of Zen, who consider the self to be an illusion - an almost-fictional creation of the mind. Obviously, habits of mind are fundamental to the process of building up this illusion. Zen challenges us to strip away such illusions to discover what (if anything) we are. For example, is it true that we are male or female depending on totally unquestioned habits of mind, behavior and speech patterns?

Judith Butler would seem to say that's the case. The program is worth a look ...

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