Interesting article over at Cato titled "Shattering Intelligence: Implications for Education and Interventions" by James R. Flynn. The site is Shattering Intelligence
I would comment on this article, except that I have already pre-commented on the article on this blog at On Intelligence
It is interesting to see how much Flynn agrees with what I posted. I have little doubt he's been working on intelligence longer than have I, but I haven't read anything by him before this, and it is interesting to see ideas converging like this.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Huckleberry Finn Under Attack Yet Again
I'm not sure I can say it any better than this when it comes to "Huckleberry Finn": Huckleberry Finn and "Muslim" Jim
We have become so uneducated in our country that we don't even know what education means. We are so illiterate in this country that there are people who haven't read this novel in order to know what it's really about. Sometimes offensive words are needed to make a point -- or a counterpoint. Twain here is a genius. But fewer and fewer are going to get to learn that.
We have become so uneducated in our country that we don't even know what education means. We are so illiterate in this country that there are people who haven't read this novel in order to know what it's really about. Sometimes offensive words are needed to make a point -- or a counterpoint. Twain here is a genius. But fewer and fewer are going to get to learn that.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
The Middle Way, Part 6 (Death vs. Growth vs. Cancer)
Extremes do not create happiness. How much is enough? How little is too little? Perhaps only each individual can answer that. But too much growth, to the point of it taking over every element of your life (or the world), is cancer, and none is death. You are not a better person just because you are very rich, or very poor. And likely, you are not happy in either extreme. As Marinoff points out, "Materialists who pursue pleasure and profit above all else remain unhappy. Religious fanatics who pursue denial of modernism above all else remain unhappy. American hedonism overproduces and overconsumes; religious fanaticism underproduces and underconsumes. Each accuses the other of evil. Each sees the other's extremism, yet each is blind to its own" (78). Shall we starve todeath? Shall we allow ourselves to be comsumed by a single thing? Shall we allow the world to be so consumed -- or starved? We forget that cancer causes death.
Perhaps a year ago I wrote the following essay. This seems a good place to share it.
On Health and the Holy
In English the words holy, whole, hale, and health are etymologically connected – Old English halig, hal, and hælth, respectively, which are all related to hal. Thus are they conceptually connected. To see the world as holy is to see the world as whole – it is to have the world “appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt” (William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”). The word holistic comes from the Greek holos, whole. Thus the holy is holistic – God is holy because He encompasses all. Perhaps one could even say that we can recognize the divine only when we come to see the world as a whole, when we see the universe as universal. When we can come
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour. (William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”)
Health and hale is the same. To have health is to have wholeness. To be hale is to be healthy – whole and complete. To make healthy is to make whole again. One is healed through medication. But ideally, one would rather maintain one’s health than have to withstand the ravages of medication (pharmaceutical comes from the Greek pharmakon, which means both poison and medicine – as it does today), though medication is necessary to stave off disease. This is the purpose of Plato’s Pharmakon, to stave off disease. For disease is the opposite of health.
The Modern Era, which we are still in, though we may be at the end of it, began when Descartes split man in two – body and soul. It was a necessary division for the development of modern science (which Descartes all but admits to – the division is so the Church will tend to the soul, while the body is left alone, to be tended to by scientists such as Descartes), but it was certainly an unholy division (as all divisions are, by definition). Kant deepened this division. Hegel tried to mend it through philosophical synthesis. Marx tried to mend it by recommending the overthrow of half of the world – the world would then be wholly Proletarian. Nietzsche responded to Hegel by dividing the world up even more – for him, humans are not divided into body and soul, but are instead a series of masks. With postmodernism, the division is complete: men and women, multiculturalism, radical Cartesian individualism divide us up more and more. Any universality is denied. A necessary development – and not without its truth (I am aware of the irony of using the word truth, which comes from the Old English treowth, related to the word troth, from which we get the word betrothed, to speak of an idea that is more interested in divorce than betrothal). But it is precisely as unholy as one can get.
The deep divisions fostered by postmodernism came about because of a view that grand narratives, attempts to universalize, and seeing the world as holistic created the problems of the 20th Century. The Marxist grand narrative gave us the gulag of the Soviet Union, the massacres of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and any number of other slaughters done by governments who had embraced Marxist philosophy. We looked back on history after the Holocaust, saw the grand narrative of Christianity had in the past itself promoted the killing of Jews – particularly in the Inquisition – and concluded that it too was dangerous. One could also mention The Terror of the French Revolution. What did Marxism, Medieval Christianity, and the French Revolution have in common? One thing was that they were all grand narratives. Thus, the logic goes, it must be grand narratives which are bad. And what do grand narratives do? They see the world as a whole, which must be encompassed by their ideology. To make the world a whole, it must be placed under their one ideology. Thus, holistic world views were seen as bad – thus were they, and holiness, rejected. The path to Heaven – whether that heaven was celestial or earthly – seemed to lead us straight into Hell. Perhaps in part the rejection of holding a holistic view came about because it is related to the holy, and the holy has been rejected. To the extent that wisdom is the ability to see the unity of the world – meaning wisdom is the ability to see the world as holy – wisdom was also rejected as impossible, perhaps even undesirable.
The error in this way of thinking derives from the error made in seeing Communism, Christianity, or the ideals of the French Revolution as interested in seeing the world as holistic. None of them saw the world as holistic, as holy – they instead wanted to make the world whole, under their particular umbrellas. They too fostered divisions – there were enemies who had to be either converted or killed in order that the world could be made holy. “For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy” (Blake “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”). Now Blake here uses the word “appear.” None of them saw the world as holy. It had to be made so – through conflagration, if necessary. Postmodern thought, by dividing the world even more, does not help us to see the world as holy – quite the contrary. However, by insisting on equality among the various parts – among individuals, among cultures, among religions, among any number of groups of individuals – postmodern thought may ironically make it now possible to see the world as being, rather than needing to become, holy.
It may seem ironic to suggest that only by reaching the most severe of divisions – seeing the world as eminently unholy – that we can finally come to see that the world is in fact holy, but I am not being ironic. To see the world as holy is not to see everything in the world as equal in an egalitarian sense. There are hierarchies. To see the world as holy is to understand how everything fits into the world as a whole. It is to see the world as an immense organism, and to care for its health. An organism is made up of systems, organs, tissues, cells, organelles, and various biochemicals. For one group to want to envelop the entire world in one way of thinking, believing, viewing the world, would be the same as one cell wanting to envelop the entire organism in that one type of cell. We have a word for cells that want to do that: cancer. The postmodernists have mistaken viewing the actions of cancerous cells for seeing the whole organism. Cancer must be fought, not mistaken for the animal it is in. That is the only way one can have a healthy organism – and it is the only way to have a holy world. Like a healthy organism, a holy world is complex. Like a healthy organism, a holy world has smoothly working parts in communication with each other through clear rules that proscribe what each part needs to do for the whole to work well. Like a healthy organism, this cannot come from any centralized authority – there is no one control cell in the body, and the brain must have the lungs just as much as the lungs must have the brain. A holy world is like a healthy organism.
In Negative Theology, one comes to know what God is by figuring out what God is not. Aristotle says that if you are not sure if something is good, try to figure out what is bad, and you can then deduce that what is good is its opposite.
The following are unhealthy:
1. Overeating, including eating a high percentage of foods with low nutritional value, while remaining inactive (not exercising)
2. Either stagnation or change without continuity – both create instability
3. Stress and anxiety – which comes about from not realizing that there are parts of the world that one cannot control, and can lead to anger at those very things
4. Hatred – aside from raising the blood pressure, it can cause one to act in ways that would be unhealthy for the object of our hatred
5. Cancer – already discussed
6. Excess – including the excess of moderation
7. Shackles – prevents sufficient movement, equating to lack of exercise
8. Pollution – it can lead to any number of diseases
9. An overly-clean environment – it can prevent our immune systems from developing properly, making us more susceptible to diseases, especially autoimmune diseases
10. Suicide – inherently and obviously unhealthy
11. Isolation – loneliness can lead to depression, which depresses the immune system
12. Ignorance – either of the world or of oneself, as one cannot maintain one’s health if one is ignorant of what can harm it or improve it
This leads one to posit the following are healthy:
1. Exercise, with a diet proper to the amount of exercise and of high nutritional value
2. Change with continuity
3. Realizing that there are parts of the world that one cannot control, thus reducing stress and anxiety
4. Love
5. Keeping the body in hierarchical harmony
6. Moderation in everything, including moderation – remembering that moderation is an extreme in the same way that life is an extreme state of organic chemistry
7. Freedom – remembering that freedom does not equate to a lack of rules, but is rather what is achieved through playing by the best rules
8. Cleanliness (which, as the saying goes, is next to Godliness, meaning it is holy)
9. A non-sanitized world – a world without dirt is a world that makes unhealthy organisms
10. Love of one’s own life
11. Friends
12. Knowledge – including self-knowledge
One can make a similar list of what makes for a healthy mind:
1. Taking in healthy information – good art, music, literature, philosophy, the sciences, etc. – with sufficient exercise of the mind through thought, discussion, and writing
2. Change with continuity
3. Realizing that there are parts of the world that one cannot control, thus reducing stress and anxiety, which can negatively affect the mind as well as the body
4. Love
5. Having a variety of inputs – obsession with one thing alone is a kind of mental cancer
6. Moderation in everything, including moderation – moderation of reading, of rigorous thought, sexual thoughts, work, play, physical activity, etc.
7. Freedom of thought – we must not think in shackles, but with flexible rules
8. Cleanliness of thought – this does not necessarily mean what it has traditionally meant in the West, though it can certainly contain some elements; thinking about sex is in and of itself not unclean
9. Realization that we do not and cannot live in a sanitized world, as that stops thought and creativity
10. Love of thinking
11. Friends – as Aristotle says in Rhetoric, “a wide circle of friends, a virtuous circle of friends,” and, I would add, a mentally stimulating circle of friends
12. Knowledge – including self knowledge – with the goal of wisdom
A holy world is one that parallels the healthy body and the healthy mind, and will have the above qualities, including moderation in everything, including moderation (i.e., it will be a just world), freedom (this is freedom from, not freedom to), love, friendship, and beauty. A holy world is a beautiful world, both having variety in unity, unity in variety, complexity, and fluid hierarchy that is self-similar regardless of scale. All of the parts, living in love and friendship (which does not exclude healthy competition, such as we find in sports and in free trade), living in a complex dynamic with each other, living as individuals in various communities, many of which overlap and are nested within other communities, must be self-similar to have a holy world.
In Greek, to kalon means the beautiful, but it can also mean the honorable or the noble – and kala can mean either things that are beautiful or things that are morally good. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle says that “Now kalon describes whatever, through being chosen for itself, is praiseworthy or whatever, through being good [agathon], is pleasant because it is good [agathon]. If this, then, is the kalon, then virtue is necessarily kalon; for it is praiseworthy because of being good [agathon]” (79). Elaine Scarry points out that in English too, there is a connection between beauty and the good (the just), when she points out that to say that something is fair is to say that it is either beautiful or that it is just. In Greek and in English, the beautiful and the good are connected. If a holy world is a beautiful world, it is a good and just world as well. As Heraclitus said, “For god all things are fair and just, but men have taken some things as unjust, others as just” (LXVIII). The key here is that we see the world itself as just – not the actions of each and every individual. The world is itself justified and cannot itself be unjust. This is consistent with the teachings of any religion that sees the world as having been created by God or the gods – how could a fair and just god create a world that was itself unjust? And if theistic religions are rejected, how can the world itself possibly be unjust? To say it is unjust is to give it anthropomorphic qualities. It is people who have taken some things as being just, others as unjust – but the world itself is self-justified. Those who do not see the world as just are those who do not see the world as holy – often they are the same people who think the only way the world can be justified is if the world is made holy through the transformation of it into a perfect mirror of themselves. But we have seen that a world made up of only one world view is a cancerous world – and the world, as a cancerous organism, will die. An organism cannot consist of one type of cell – that is the unhealthiest of organisms. And a world having only one world view is the unhealthiest of worlds. In the same way that a healthy body consists of a variety of cells that are variations of the same theme coded by identical DNA, a healthy world consists of a variety of peoples that are variations of the same themes coded for by our being human and sharing the same cultural universals.
Beauty is also related to health – as we can see in the beauty we find in nature. Healthy plants produce the most beautiful flowers. Healthy peacocks produce the largest, most symmetrical, most colorful feathers. Healthy gobies and other territorial reef fish have the brightest colors. All of this natural beauty is the advertisement of health to the opposite sex. The healthiest human bodies (neither overweight nor super model thin) are the most beautiful. Thus is there also a relationship between health, beauty, and sex. If beauty can thus be equated to health, we can see that beauty is again equated to the holy. And we can see too that sex in-and-of-itself is and cannot be unholy, as it is connected (but not equivalent) to beauty.
A holy world is a whole world. It is a healthy world. It is a good and just world. It is a complex world. It is a world of individuals in community. It is a beautiful world. But is it a possible world? I have already given the answer: the world is itself already holy. We just have to learn to see it as holy. That is how we will heal the world. And, as we do, we will become less and less likely to want or try to eliminate those who disagree with us – until we are all in agreement on this one issue, as all the cells in an organism are in agreement on the one issue that they must work together for the health of the whole, even as each performs its own function. Thus, the world will become more and more holy in our eyes. In works of tragedy, nomos (convention, human law, naming; from which we get the words nomad and nomenclature, and which is the changing and changeable aspect of the world) comes into conflict with physis (or nature; from which we get the word physics). That is the position we are now in. When we get nomos to map onto physis (Heraclitus calls this conjunction logos – which can be translated as saying, speech, discourse, word, account, explanation, reason, principle, collection, enumeration, ratio, proportion), we will see the world as it truly is: holy.
On the Holy
Where lies the holy in the modern world?
It lies in Blake’s world in a grain of sand –
It lies, and lies like the truth, in patterns
Like self-organized rings of rocks barren
Arctic fields create. It lies in the branch
Of every tree and species, leafing out
From the known into the unknown. It lies
In every song, painting and rhythmic verse.
We have looked at every leaf and petal,
At the bark and at the wood, every cell
And strand of DNA is now known –
And we have forgotten that all of this
Was once a tree that gave us shade and filled
The air with delicate sweetness and held
The grains of sand against its roots to hold
The ground in place, even as that ground moves
And changes in tiny ways we refuse
To see. In this we can see the holy.
This is where it lies, now and forever,
On the edge of order and wild chaos,
Where the infinite holds in the finite,
Where we, ourselves holy, have always lived.
Bibliography:
Aristotle. On Rhetoric Trans. George Kennedy. Oxford University Press 1991
Blake, William. The Selected Poems of William Blake The Wordsworth Poetry Library. 1994
Heraclitus. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus Trans. Charles Kahn. Cambridge Univ. Press 1997
Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 1999
Perhaps a year ago I wrote the following essay. This seems a good place to share it.
On Health and the Holy
In English the words holy, whole, hale, and health are etymologically connected – Old English halig, hal, and hælth, respectively, which are all related to hal. Thus are they conceptually connected. To see the world as holy is to see the world as whole – it is to have the world “appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt” (William Blake, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”). The word holistic comes from the Greek holos, whole. Thus the holy is holistic – God is holy because He encompasses all. Perhaps one could even say that we can recognize the divine only when we come to see the world as a whole, when we see the universe as universal. When we can come
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour. (William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”)
Health and hale is the same. To have health is to have wholeness. To be hale is to be healthy – whole and complete. To make healthy is to make whole again. One is healed through medication. But ideally, one would rather maintain one’s health than have to withstand the ravages of medication (pharmaceutical comes from the Greek pharmakon, which means both poison and medicine – as it does today), though medication is necessary to stave off disease. This is the purpose of Plato’s Pharmakon, to stave off disease. For disease is the opposite of health.
The Modern Era, which we are still in, though we may be at the end of it, began when Descartes split man in two – body and soul. It was a necessary division for the development of modern science (which Descartes all but admits to – the division is so the Church will tend to the soul, while the body is left alone, to be tended to by scientists such as Descartes), but it was certainly an unholy division (as all divisions are, by definition). Kant deepened this division. Hegel tried to mend it through philosophical synthesis. Marx tried to mend it by recommending the overthrow of half of the world – the world would then be wholly Proletarian. Nietzsche responded to Hegel by dividing the world up even more – for him, humans are not divided into body and soul, but are instead a series of masks. With postmodernism, the division is complete: men and women, multiculturalism, radical Cartesian individualism divide us up more and more. Any universality is denied. A necessary development – and not without its truth (I am aware of the irony of using the word truth, which comes from the Old English treowth, related to the word troth, from which we get the word betrothed, to speak of an idea that is more interested in divorce than betrothal). But it is precisely as unholy as one can get.
The deep divisions fostered by postmodernism came about because of a view that grand narratives, attempts to universalize, and seeing the world as holistic created the problems of the 20th Century. The Marxist grand narrative gave us the gulag of the Soviet Union, the massacres of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and any number of other slaughters done by governments who had embraced Marxist philosophy. We looked back on history after the Holocaust, saw the grand narrative of Christianity had in the past itself promoted the killing of Jews – particularly in the Inquisition – and concluded that it too was dangerous. One could also mention The Terror of the French Revolution. What did Marxism, Medieval Christianity, and the French Revolution have in common? One thing was that they were all grand narratives. Thus, the logic goes, it must be grand narratives which are bad. And what do grand narratives do? They see the world as a whole, which must be encompassed by their ideology. To make the world a whole, it must be placed under their one ideology. Thus, holistic world views were seen as bad – thus were they, and holiness, rejected. The path to Heaven – whether that heaven was celestial or earthly – seemed to lead us straight into Hell. Perhaps in part the rejection of holding a holistic view came about because it is related to the holy, and the holy has been rejected. To the extent that wisdom is the ability to see the unity of the world – meaning wisdom is the ability to see the world as holy – wisdom was also rejected as impossible, perhaps even undesirable.
The error in this way of thinking derives from the error made in seeing Communism, Christianity, or the ideals of the French Revolution as interested in seeing the world as holistic. None of them saw the world as holistic, as holy – they instead wanted to make the world whole, under their particular umbrellas. They too fostered divisions – there were enemies who had to be either converted or killed in order that the world could be made holy. “For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy” (Blake “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”). Now Blake here uses the word “appear.” None of them saw the world as holy. It had to be made so – through conflagration, if necessary. Postmodern thought, by dividing the world even more, does not help us to see the world as holy – quite the contrary. However, by insisting on equality among the various parts – among individuals, among cultures, among religions, among any number of groups of individuals – postmodern thought may ironically make it now possible to see the world as being, rather than needing to become, holy.
It may seem ironic to suggest that only by reaching the most severe of divisions – seeing the world as eminently unholy – that we can finally come to see that the world is in fact holy, but I am not being ironic. To see the world as holy is not to see everything in the world as equal in an egalitarian sense. There are hierarchies. To see the world as holy is to understand how everything fits into the world as a whole. It is to see the world as an immense organism, and to care for its health. An organism is made up of systems, organs, tissues, cells, organelles, and various biochemicals. For one group to want to envelop the entire world in one way of thinking, believing, viewing the world, would be the same as one cell wanting to envelop the entire organism in that one type of cell. We have a word for cells that want to do that: cancer. The postmodernists have mistaken viewing the actions of cancerous cells for seeing the whole organism. Cancer must be fought, not mistaken for the animal it is in. That is the only way one can have a healthy organism – and it is the only way to have a holy world. Like a healthy organism, a holy world is complex. Like a healthy organism, a holy world has smoothly working parts in communication with each other through clear rules that proscribe what each part needs to do for the whole to work well. Like a healthy organism, this cannot come from any centralized authority – there is no one control cell in the body, and the brain must have the lungs just as much as the lungs must have the brain. A holy world is like a healthy organism.
In Negative Theology, one comes to know what God is by figuring out what God is not. Aristotle says that if you are not sure if something is good, try to figure out what is bad, and you can then deduce that what is good is its opposite.
The following are unhealthy:
1. Overeating, including eating a high percentage of foods with low nutritional value, while remaining inactive (not exercising)
2. Either stagnation or change without continuity – both create instability
3. Stress and anxiety – which comes about from not realizing that there are parts of the world that one cannot control, and can lead to anger at those very things
4. Hatred – aside from raising the blood pressure, it can cause one to act in ways that would be unhealthy for the object of our hatred
5. Cancer – already discussed
6. Excess – including the excess of moderation
7. Shackles – prevents sufficient movement, equating to lack of exercise
8. Pollution – it can lead to any number of diseases
9. An overly-clean environment – it can prevent our immune systems from developing properly, making us more susceptible to diseases, especially autoimmune diseases
10. Suicide – inherently and obviously unhealthy
11. Isolation – loneliness can lead to depression, which depresses the immune system
12. Ignorance – either of the world or of oneself, as one cannot maintain one’s health if one is ignorant of what can harm it or improve it
This leads one to posit the following are healthy:
1. Exercise, with a diet proper to the amount of exercise and of high nutritional value
2. Change with continuity
3. Realizing that there are parts of the world that one cannot control, thus reducing stress and anxiety
4. Love
5. Keeping the body in hierarchical harmony
6. Moderation in everything, including moderation – remembering that moderation is an extreme in the same way that life is an extreme state of organic chemistry
7. Freedom – remembering that freedom does not equate to a lack of rules, but is rather what is achieved through playing by the best rules
8. Cleanliness (which, as the saying goes, is next to Godliness, meaning it is holy)
9. A non-sanitized world – a world without dirt is a world that makes unhealthy organisms
10. Love of one’s own life
11. Friends
12. Knowledge – including self-knowledge
One can make a similar list of what makes for a healthy mind:
1. Taking in healthy information – good art, music, literature, philosophy, the sciences, etc. – with sufficient exercise of the mind through thought, discussion, and writing
2. Change with continuity
3. Realizing that there are parts of the world that one cannot control, thus reducing stress and anxiety, which can negatively affect the mind as well as the body
4. Love
5. Having a variety of inputs – obsession with one thing alone is a kind of mental cancer
6. Moderation in everything, including moderation – moderation of reading, of rigorous thought, sexual thoughts, work, play, physical activity, etc.
7. Freedom of thought – we must not think in shackles, but with flexible rules
8. Cleanliness of thought – this does not necessarily mean what it has traditionally meant in the West, though it can certainly contain some elements; thinking about sex is in and of itself not unclean
9. Realization that we do not and cannot live in a sanitized world, as that stops thought and creativity
10. Love of thinking
11. Friends – as Aristotle says in Rhetoric, “a wide circle of friends, a virtuous circle of friends,” and, I would add, a mentally stimulating circle of friends
12. Knowledge – including self knowledge – with the goal of wisdom
A holy world is one that parallels the healthy body and the healthy mind, and will have the above qualities, including moderation in everything, including moderation (i.e., it will be a just world), freedom (this is freedom from, not freedom to), love, friendship, and beauty. A holy world is a beautiful world, both having variety in unity, unity in variety, complexity, and fluid hierarchy that is self-similar regardless of scale. All of the parts, living in love and friendship (which does not exclude healthy competition, such as we find in sports and in free trade), living in a complex dynamic with each other, living as individuals in various communities, many of which overlap and are nested within other communities, must be self-similar to have a holy world.
In Greek, to kalon means the beautiful, but it can also mean the honorable or the noble – and kala can mean either things that are beautiful or things that are morally good. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle says that “Now kalon describes whatever, through being chosen for itself, is praiseworthy or whatever, through being good [agathon], is pleasant because it is good [agathon]. If this, then, is the kalon, then virtue is necessarily kalon; for it is praiseworthy because of being good [agathon]” (79). Elaine Scarry points out that in English too, there is a connection between beauty and the good (the just), when she points out that to say that something is fair is to say that it is either beautiful or that it is just. In Greek and in English, the beautiful and the good are connected. If a holy world is a beautiful world, it is a good and just world as well. As Heraclitus said, “For god all things are fair and just, but men have taken some things as unjust, others as just” (LXVIII). The key here is that we see the world itself as just – not the actions of each and every individual. The world is itself justified and cannot itself be unjust. This is consistent with the teachings of any religion that sees the world as having been created by God or the gods – how could a fair and just god create a world that was itself unjust? And if theistic religions are rejected, how can the world itself possibly be unjust? To say it is unjust is to give it anthropomorphic qualities. It is people who have taken some things as being just, others as unjust – but the world itself is self-justified. Those who do not see the world as just are those who do not see the world as holy – often they are the same people who think the only way the world can be justified is if the world is made holy through the transformation of it into a perfect mirror of themselves. But we have seen that a world made up of only one world view is a cancerous world – and the world, as a cancerous organism, will die. An organism cannot consist of one type of cell – that is the unhealthiest of organisms. And a world having only one world view is the unhealthiest of worlds. In the same way that a healthy body consists of a variety of cells that are variations of the same theme coded by identical DNA, a healthy world consists of a variety of peoples that are variations of the same themes coded for by our being human and sharing the same cultural universals.
Beauty is also related to health – as we can see in the beauty we find in nature. Healthy plants produce the most beautiful flowers. Healthy peacocks produce the largest, most symmetrical, most colorful feathers. Healthy gobies and other territorial reef fish have the brightest colors. All of this natural beauty is the advertisement of health to the opposite sex. The healthiest human bodies (neither overweight nor super model thin) are the most beautiful. Thus is there also a relationship between health, beauty, and sex. If beauty can thus be equated to health, we can see that beauty is again equated to the holy. And we can see too that sex in-and-of-itself is and cannot be unholy, as it is connected (but not equivalent) to beauty.
A holy world is a whole world. It is a healthy world. It is a good and just world. It is a complex world. It is a world of individuals in community. It is a beautiful world. But is it a possible world? I have already given the answer: the world is itself already holy. We just have to learn to see it as holy. That is how we will heal the world. And, as we do, we will become less and less likely to want or try to eliminate those who disagree with us – until we are all in agreement on this one issue, as all the cells in an organism are in agreement on the one issue that they must work together for the health of the whole, even as each performs its own function. Thus, the world will become more and more holy in our eyes. In works of tragedy, nomos (convention, human law, naming; from which we get the words nomad and nomenclature, and which is the changing and changeable aspect of the world) comes into conflict with physis (or nature; from which we get the word physics). That is the position we are now in. When we get nomos to map onto physis (Heraclitus calls this conjunction logos – which can be translated as saying, speech, discourse, word, account, explanation, reason, principle, collection, enumeration, ratio, proportion), we will see the world as it truly is: holy.
On the Holy
Where lies the holy in the modern world?
It lies in Blake’s world in a grain of sand –
It lies, and lies like the truth, in patterns
Like self-organized rings of rocks barren
Arctic fields create. It lies in the branch
Of every tree and species, leafing out
From the known into the unknown. It lies
In every song, painting and rhythmic verse.
We have looked at every leaf and petal,
At the bark and at the wood, every cell
And strand of DNA is now known –
And we have forgotten that all of this
Was once a tree that gave us shade and filled
The air with delicate sweetness and held
The grains of sand against its roots to hold
The ground in place, even as that ground moves
And changes in tiny ways we refuse
To see. In this we can see the holy.
This is where it lies, now and forever,
On the edge of order and wild chaos,
Where the infinite holds in the finite,
Where we, ourselves holy, have always lived.
Bibliography:
Aristotle. On Rhetoric Trans. George Kennedy. Oxford University Press 1991
Blake, William. The Selected Poems of William Blake The Wordsworth Poetry Library. 1994
Heraclitus. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus Trans. Charles Kahn. Cambridge Univ. Press 1997
Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 1999
A Vague, Calculated Answer
While campaigning in South Carolina, Barack Obama said Hillary Clinton was giving "vague, calculated answers to suit the politics of the moment instead of clear, consistent principles about how you would lead America." Doesn't Obama know that if you speak from consistent principles that you will be able to be pinned down, meaning people will be able to criticize what you are saying, meaning your ideas will be challenged, and that will get people to think about what you mean by what you say, meaning you could lose votes? Vague, calculated answers are what you need if you want people to vote for you without knowing what you intend to do to, er, for them.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
The Middle Way, Part 5 (Morals vs. Virtues)
After spending a great deal of time talking about Aristotle's Golden Mean, Marionff asks the following questions: "Is every human behavior subject to Aristotle's golden mean? Does Aristotle sanction anything, provided that it's done in moderation?" (63). The answer is, of course not. Marinoff points out that Aristotle prohibits murder, theft, robbery, lying, and adultery. This set, prohibited by every other set of ethics throughout history and in every culture, are what we classify as morals. Aristotle's golden mean applies to virtues. Virtues and morals together are ethics. We are typically very careless about our terminology, and this has created many problems as people have claimed that all morals are relative, when perhaps they should have been talking about virtues.
Marc Hauser makes the argument in his excellent book "Moral Minds" that there is a biological source for our moral actions. He argues that we judge something as wrong first, then rationalize it later. More than that, we see that the moral prohibitions of murder, theft, robbery, lying, and adultery are all biological in origin. Let's take each in turn, then return to the issue of virtue.
Murder. Murder is the killing of someone in your own tribe. If you kill someone outside your tribe, that is not considered murder. The variations we see in the definition of "murder" only come about in the variations we see in who different groups consider to be in their tribes. The larger one's tribe is, the more people one considers illegitimate to kill. We in the West consider everyone to be in our tribe, so we have gone so far as to develop international treaties to extradite murderers and to protest our going to war with other countries. Now, if murder is to be defined as I have defined it, then how does that explain such things as human sacrifices? That is simple: ritual. In every case, the culture in question performs some sort of ritual that removes the person from the tribe, making them an outsider and, thus, able to be killed. We do the same thing in the U.S. when it comes to certain kinds of murderers: we perform a ritual (a trial) that removes them from society, so we can kill them. Those who oppose the death penalty simply do not agree that this is a legitimate ritual, or that we should any longer have such rituals.
Theft and Robbery. Each of these results in the taking of property from someone else, who is the legitimate owner. To even have theft and robbery, you have to have some sort of idea of ownership, or private property rights. In a much older post I talk about the evolutionary origins of property rights, to which I refer the reader. This deep evolutionary drive to protect one's property is the origin of the moral directive not to steal.
Lying. There is lying, and then there is lying. There are kinds of lying that are necessary for strong social bonds to exist -- the famous "white lie." Those are not the kinds of lies we are talking about here. I am talking about what the Old Testament prohibits: "bearing false witness." What is the difference between lying and bearing false witness? If you bear false witness, you are lying to either hurt someone else, or to benefit yourself at someone else's expense. This kind of lying, bearing of false witness, is prohbited precisely because it undermines social bonds and creates a society without trust. Telling a woman her ugly baby is cute is just being polite -- and it doesn't harm anybody, but on the contrary, creates stronger social bonds. However, we are in danger when we take this too far too. Should we tell a student their writing is fine when it is in fact incomprehensible? The student may like you that semester, but you have not helped that student (or society, for that matter) by lying to them. Sometimes you have to hurt feelings to make people better.
Adultery. This, again, breaks social bonds -- and it breaks the most important social bond of all, the familial bond. There are many different kinds of marriages that have been practiced, including open ones, but even in a polygamous or an open marraige, if there is adultery, or having sex with someone else without the spouse's knowledge, that inevitably creates hurt feelings and breaks the bonds of trust. Here again, it is the most basic of social bonds that are being broken here. And, as Confucius points out, the family is the ground of community.
What connects these immoral acts together is that they are all things that we would not do to a member of our family. For that reason, rape, too, should be included. Each of these behaviors results in the breaking of family bonds and, thus, the breaking of social bonds. The family is simply a small, self-similar part of the larger social fractal. As the family goes, so goes society.
The rest of human behavior is then covered under virtue. And with them, we have such things as manners. With the loss of manners, we have seen the loss of virtue. We have mistaken libertinage for liberty, allowing ourselves to do anything we want, thinking anarchy is freedom. The truth is, it is good rules which give us more degrees of freedom. Manners and virtue allow us to become better than what our biology commands us to be. It allows us to grow (the golden mean is the principle of growth, after all). It allows us to become more beautiful people, to develop more beautiful souls.
Marc Hauser makes the argument in his excellent book "Moral Minds" that there is a biological source for our moral actions. He argues that we judge something as wrong first, then rationalize it later. More than that, we see that the moral prohibitions of murder, theft, robbery, lying, and adultery are all biological in origin. Let's take each in turn, then return to the issue of virtue.
Murder. Murder is the killing of someone in your own tribe. If you kill someone outside your tribe, that is not considered murder. The variations we see in the definition of "murder" only come about in the variations we see in who different groups consider to be in their tribes. The larger one's tribe is, the more people one considers illegitimate to kill. We in the West consider everyone to be in our tribe, so we have gone so far as to develop international treaties to extradite murderers and to protest our going to war with other countries. Now, if murder is to be defined as I have defined it, then how does that explain such things as human sacrifices? That is simple: ritual. In every case, the culture in question performs some sort of ritual that removes the person from the tribe, making them an outsider and, thus, able to be killed. We do the same thing in the U.S. when it comes to certain kinds of murderers: we perform a ritual (a trial) that removes them from society, so we can kill them. Those who oppose the death penalty simply do not agree that this is a legitimate ritual, or that we should any longer have such rituals.
Theft and Robbery. Each of these results in the taking of property from someone else, who is the legitimate owner. To even have theft and robbery, you have to have some sort of idea of ownership, or private property rights. In a much older post I talk about the evolutionary origins of property rights, to which I refer the reader. This deep evolutionary drive to protect one's property is the origin of the moral directive not to steal.
Lying. There is lying, and then there is lying. There are kinds of lying that are necessary for strong social bonds to exist -- the famous "white lie." Those are not the kinds of lies we are talking about here. I am talking about what the Old Testament prohibits: "bearing false witness." What is the difference between lying and bearing false witness? If you bear false witness, you are lying to either hurt someone else, or to benefit yourself at someone else's expense. This kind of lying, bearing of false witness, is prohbited precisely because it undermines social bonds and creates a society without trust. Telling a woman her ugly baby is cute is just being polite -- and it doesn't harm anybody, but on the contrary, creates stronger social bonds. However, we are in danger when we take this too far too. Should we tell a student their writing is fine when it is in fact incomprehensible? The student may like you that semester, but you have not helped that student (or society, for that matter) by lying to them. Sometimes you have to hurt feelings to make people better.
Adultery. This, again, breaks social bonds -- and it breaks the most important social bond of all, the familial bond. There are many different kinds of marriages that have been practiced, including open ones, but even in a polygamous or an open marraige, if there is adultery, or having sex with someone else without the spouse's knowledge, that inevitably creates hurt feelings and breaks the bonds of trust. Here again, it is the most basic of social bonds that are being broken here. And, as Confucius points out, the family is the ground of community.
What connects these immoral acts together is that they are all things that we would not do to a member of our family. For that reason, rape, too, should be included. Each of these behaviors results in the breaking of family bonds and, thus, the breaking of social bonds. The family is simply a small, self-similar part of the larger social fractal. As the family goes, so goes society.
The rest of human behavior is then covered under virtue. And with them, we have such things as manners. With the loss of manners, we have seen the loss of virtue. We have mistaken libertinage for liberty, allowing ourselves to do anything we want, thinking anarchy is freedom. The truth is, it is good rules which give us more degrees of freedom. Manners and virtue allow us to become better than what our biology commands us to be. It allows us to grow (the golden mean is the principle of growth, after all). It allows us to become more beautiful people, to develop more beautiful souls.
Pakistani Martial Law
If Musharraf weren't pretending to help the U.S. capture bin Laden, who here thinks that the U.S. would, as of today, with Musharraf taking measures to make it impossible to remove him from office, be demanding that the international community suspend trade, diplomatic relations, etc.? Instead we have Rice "urging" Pakistan to return to democracy. So much for Bush's declaration that the U.S. would no longer support non-democratic nations even for strategic reasons.
This is not to say that I think suspending trade and diplomatic relations actually has any sort of beneficial effect. Right off the top of my head, I can't think of a single incidence where that happened. My point is that nothing has really changed with the way we support dictators -- including dictators that everyone has to know isn't actually doing a thing to help us, but is only putting on a show for us.
So what should we be doing? How about free trade with everyone, entangling alliances with no one? History has shown that the U.S. has had far greater positive influence on those countries with which we have had good diplomatic relationshiips and free trade agreements. China is an excellent example of things moving in the right direction (and also a good example of the fact that things don't turn around overnight. One does have to have patience); Cuba is an example of a place that is still in the mess it's in, with the U.S. taking the opposite approach. If we want to spread democracy, the only real way to do it is to freely trade with countries, allow the people to become wealthier and the society to become more complex, and then democracy will come on its own, from the people of the country. People who are poor and beat down and are surviving day by day can't revolt. And typically don't. Look at who really revolted in history: it was the well-off who decided they had had enough of the government aggravating them all the time. Often they are the well-educated. So we need to get people wealthy and well-educated in other countries if we want to spread democracy. The way that we can do it is through free trade.
This is not to say that I think suspending trade and diplomatic relations actually has any sort of beneficial effect. Right off the top of my head, I can't think of a single incidence where that happened. My point is that nothing has really changed with the way we support dictators -- including dictators that everyone has to know isn't actually doing a thing to help us, but is only putting on a show for us.
So what should we be doing? How about free trade with everyone, entangling alliances with no one? History has shown that the U.S. has had far greater positive influence on those countries with which we have had good diplomatic relationshiips and free trade agreements. China is an excellent example of things moving in the right direction (and also a good example of the fact that things don't turn around overnight. One does have to have patience); Cuba is an example of a place that is still in the mess it's in, with the U.S. taking the opposite approach. If we want to spread democracy, the only real way to do it is to freely trade with countries, allow the people to become wealthier and the society to become more complex, and then democracy will come on its own, from the people of the country. People who are poor and beat down and are surviving day by day can't revolt. And typically don't. Look at who really revolted in history: it was the well-off who decided they had had enough of the government aggravating them all the time. Often they are the well-educated. So we need to get people wealthy and well-educated in other countries if we want to spread democracy. The way that we can do it is through free trade.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Real Racism
Okay, so I admit to being a little behind on the Unviersity of Delware's support of racist views, but nonetheless let me weigh in. Here's the quote from the pamphlet UD distributed: "A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e. people of European descent) living in the United States regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination."
In the quote they define racism as white supremacism. However, if we break the word down, we see that "white" supremacism is not found in the word at all. Any time you have an "-ism" you have an ideology based on the root you attach "-ism" to. Thus, "racism" is an ideology based on race. Any time you have any kind of ideology that requires that you consider race, you have racism. So when you have a statement that "X applies to all Y kinds of people," you have a racist statement. Power is not involved in whether you believe in any sort of "-ism," and in fact, many "-isms" in the world are believed by minorities within a majority culture. It would be ridiculous to say that someone in the United States cannot believe in communism because the communists don't have the power to back up their ideology.
But let us, for the sake or argument, accept the idea that to be a racist, you have to have power. The last sentence would still be nonsense, as the victims of the Black Panthers know. A small group of people can easily get the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. Or didn't the people in charge over at UD not notice what happened on 9-11?
So we have seen that sentence 1 is at best a bad definition. The second sentence is an outright racist statement based upon the actual definition of racism. And the third sentence is an outright lie.
This analysis does to some extent have one problem: it masks my true outrage at this statement. In saying I am a racist, it is saying that I hate my Mexican-American wife and our daughter. And for that I demand an apology!
In the quote they define racism as white supremacism. However, if we break the word down, we see that "white" supremacism is not found in the word at all. Any time you have an "-ism" you have an ideology based on the root you attach "-ism" to. Thus, "racism" is an ideology based on race. Any time you have any kind of ideology that requires that you consider race, you have racism. So when you have a statement that "X applies to all Y kinds of people," you have a racist statement. Power is not involved in whether you believe in any sort of "-ism," and in fact, many "-isms" in the world are believed by minorities within a majority culture. It would be ridiculous to say that someone in the United States cannot believe in communism because the communists don't have the power to back up their ideology.
But let us, for the sake or argument, accept the idea that to be a racist, you have to have power. The last sentence would still be nonsense, as the victims of the Black Panthers know. A small group of people can easily get the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. Or didn't the people in charge over at UD not notice what happened on 9-11?
So we have seen that sentence 1 is at best a bad definition. The second sentence is an outright racist statement based upon the actual definition of racism. And the third sentence is an outright lie.
This analysis does to some extent have one problem: it masks my true outrage at this statement. In saying I am a racist, it is saying that I hate my Mexican-American wife and our daughter. And for that I demand an apology!
Altruistic Racist Warriors vs. Selfish Tolerant Pacifists
In the most recent issue of Science (Vol. 318, 26 Oct. 2007) is a fascinating article on pg. 636-640 titled "The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War" by Jung-Kyoo Choi and Samuel Bowles, with an accompanying review article on pg. 581-2 by Holly Arrow titled "The Sharp End of Altruism." You can probably find the two articles at www.sciencemag.org .
Using computer simulations, Coi and Bowles show that if you create beings with the follwing traits: either altruistic (A) or non-altruistic (N) and either tolerant (T) or parochial, or anti-stranger (P), you end up with two stable populations, depending on the conditions. Under peacetime conditions, you get "a society of selfish but tolerant freetraders" (Arrow, 581), but under wartime conditions, you get "a warrior society in which people help one another but are hostile to outsiders" (581). The other two combinations -- selfless, tolerant people and selfish racists -- seem to be unstable combinations, though more stable under peacetime conditions than under times of war. The researchers observe that one doesn't even need war to be that common for the PA combination to quickly dominate.
These conclusions make a lot of evolutionary sense. Without making the mistake of thinking of behavior as simply a choice between P and T genes, as behavior is more complex than that from both a genetic point of view and from a social point of view, by treating them as overarching behaviors that can be selected, we can see, nonetheless, that certain behaviors are more adaptive than others. Part of this has to do with territorialism. All land vertebrates are territorial to varying degrees. This allows individuals and groups to have enough food and water to continue to live. Protecting territory protects food. So we should expect species to protect their territory -- which they do. Now, if a species is going to protect its territory, it must confront those who wish to intrude on or take that territory. Various rituals have evolved that allow many confrontations to end without violence. But sometimes that breaks down. And more, in chimpanzees, we see an outright preference for attacking and killing members of other groups when the balance is in favor of the attacking group. This assumption was used by the researchers, and it led to the creation of a preference for racist altruists -- those that will sacrifice to protect family and tribe, but who hate and will attack those not in the tribe. Tolerant groups are less likely to attack first, meaning the racist groups are more likely to both attack first, killing the tolerant people of other groups. The end result is that the huan race has evolved to be racist altruists.
Now, the fact that we evolved to be racist altruists who love war in no way excuses such behavior. But it seems that this combination is the most stable one under condiitions of periodic war. The other combination is predominant under periods of peace: the TN individual. These people are tolerant of others and are willing to engage in interactions with people from different groups, yet are selfish. This is the paring most associated with Americans -- and it is no doubt because America's isolation from the rest of the world, keeping us out of constatnt wars, encourages the development of TN behavior. Does this mean PA is completely replaced? The authors don't say, but let me expand on their research a little with some thoughts on my own. It seems likely that wars may have resulted in natural selection for genetic PA's, though behavior, being complex, can still have other kinds of atrtibutes built on it by society. So in the U.S., for example, while people may be more likely to be genetic PA's, we have adopted the TN meme, and use it more often than we do the AP genetic tendencies we're born with. But as the Japanese learned in WWII, it is not difficult to awaken the "sleeping dragon" of PA behavior latent in people.
It seems, though, that so long as there are wars, the PA genes-memes will continue to dominate. However, the bad news for many of the peace activists on the Left who are TA's is that peace will not produce more of them. Rather, it appears that it will be more likely to produce more TN's -- people who are more and more likely to believe in and engage in free market economics. My guess is that Ayn Rand would be one of the few not surprised by this outcome.
Using computer simulations, Coi and Bowles show that if you create beings with the follwing traits: either altruistic (A) or non-altruistic (N) and either tolerant (T) or parochial, or anti-stranger (P), you end up with two stable populations, depending on the conditions. Under peacetime conditions, you get "a society of selfish but tolerant freetraders" (Arrow, 581), but under wartime conditions, you get "a warrior society in which people help one another but are hostile to outsiders" (581). The other two combinations -- selfless, tolerant people and selfish racists -- seem to be unstable combinations, though more stable under peacetime conditions than under times of war. The researchers observe that one doesn't even need war to be that common for the PA combination to quickly dominate.
These conclusions make a lot of evolutionary sense. Without making the mistake of thinking of behavior as simply a choice between P and T genes, as behavior is more complex than that from both a genetic point of view and from a social point of view, by treating them as overarching behaviors that can be selected, we can see, nonetheless, that certain behaviors are more adaptive than others. Part of this has to do with territorialism. All land vertebrates are territorial to varying degrees. This allows individuals and groups to have enough food and water to continue to live. Protecting territory protects food. So we should expect species to protect their territory -- which they do. Now, if a species is going to protect its territory, it must confront those who wish to intrude on or take that territory. Various rituals have evolved that allow many confrontations to end without violence. But sometimes that breaks down. And more, in chimpanzees, we see an outright preference for attacking and killing members of other groups when the balance is in favor of the attacking group. This assumption was used by the researchers, and it led to the creation of a preference for racist altruists -- those that will sacrifice to protect family and tribe, but who hate and will attack those not in the tribe. Tolerant groups are less likely to attack first, meaning the racist groups are more likely to both attack first, killing the tolerant people of other groups. The end result is that the huan race has evolved to be racist altruists.
Now, the fact that we evolved to be racist altruists who love war in no way excuses such behavior. But it seems that this combination is the most stable one under condiitions of periodic war. The other combination is predominant under periods of peace: the TN individual. These people are tolerant of others and are willing to engage in interactions with people from different groups, yet are selfish. This is the paring most associated with Americans -- and it is no doubt because America's isolation from the rest of the world, keeping us out of constatnt wars, encourages the development of TN behavior. Does this mean PA is completely replaced? The authors don't say, but let me expand on their research a little with some thoughts on my own. It seems likely that wars may have resulted in natural selection for genetic PA's, though behavior, being complex, can still have other kinds of atrtibutes built on it by society. So in the U.S., for example, while people may be more likely to be genetic PA's, we have adopted the TN meme, and use it more often than we do the AP genetic tendencies we're born with. But as the Japanese learned in WWII, it is not difficult to awaken the "sleeping dragon" of PA behavior latent in people.
It seems, though, that so long as there are wars, the PA genes-memes will continue to dominate. However, the bad news for many of the peace activists on the Left who are TA's is that peace will not produce more of them. Rather, it appears that it will be more likely to produce more TN's -- people who are more and more likely to believe in and engage in free market economics. My guess is that Ayn Rand would be one of the few not surprised by this outcome.
1st Amendment and Churches
I encourage everyone to read the following article: Church Free Speech. It is an editorial on the way our government restricts political speech in the U.S. It turns out it was one of the many mad ideas of LBJ made law. The First Amendment of the Constitution says that Congress shall make NO LAW either restricting the freedom of speech or setting up a state religion. This means that the government cannot tell people what they can or cannot say, particularly those in religious positions. It does not mean that religious leaders are not allowed to engage in political speech. The tax-exempt status was a sinister way of shutting down political speech in our churches by first offering them something, and then threatening to take it away from them. The result is that it is and can be used to intimidate people to not engage in political speech. And that is outright illegal. It is time churches got together and brought this to the Supreme Court so we can get rid of this illegal law.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Gay Old Party?
Is the Grand Old Party turning into the Gay Old Party? In July it was Florida State Rep. Bob Allen. And then it was Idaho Senator Larry Craig. And now it's Washington State Rep. Richard Curtis. All supported anti-gay legislation. To paraphrase Shakespeare: "Methinks they doth protest too much."
This isn't all that surprising if you consider that many people hate precisely what they themselves are. Self-loathing can turn into self-righteousness. It sounds like this is a group where "know thyself" is a dictim more needed than ever. I think, too, that a true understanding of the biopsychological origins of homosexual behavior would help people immensely with knowing themselves and becoming comfortable with who they are.
And please note that I said "homosexual behavior." Our closest relatives, the bonobos, are quite the sexually active, bisexual species. They use sex to strengthen social bonds -- and social bonds must be maintained with both sexes. This is the likely origin of homosexual behavior among humans, though I would also note that our opposition to homosexual behavior likely came about when we became aware of the connection between sex and reproduction, with the recognition that in order for a tribe to survive, one needed to make sure most sex was reproductive sex. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that at 6 billion people worldwide and counting, it wouldn't hurt if less sex were reproductive and more was for strengthening social bonds.
This isn't all that surprising if you consider that many people hate precisely what they themselves are. Self-loathing can turn into self-righteousness. It sounds like this is a group where "know thyself" is a dictim more needed than ever. I think, too, that a true understanding of the biopsychological origins of homosexual behavior would help people immensely with knowing themselves and becoming comfortable with who they are.
And please note that I said "homosexual behavior." Our closest relatives, the bonobos, are quite the sexually active, bisexual species. They use sex to strengthen social bonds -- and social bonds must be maintained with both sexes. This is the likely origin of homosexual behavior among humans, though I would also note that our opposition to homosexual behavior likely came about when we became aware of the connection between sex and reproduction, with the recognition that in order for a tribe to survive, one needed to make sure most sex was reproductive sex. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that at 6 billion people worldwide and counting, it wouldn't hurt if less sex were reproductive and more was for strengthening social bonds.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The Middle Way, Part 4 (Fanatics vs. Fundamentalism)
Lou Marinoff makes an excellent distinction between fanatics and fundamentalists that all too many people do not make. We typically refer to Osama bin Laden as an Islamic fundamentalist, which groups him in with various Chrstian fundamentalists such as Pat Robertson. However, "It is primarily religious (and also political) fanatics who cannot tolerate beliefs that differ from their own. Fanatics are dangerously and sometimes violently intolerant of others' beliefs, while fundamentalists are passionately wed to their own beliefs but normally pose no threat to others who believe differently" (63). Having been rasied around -- and as -- a Christian fundamentalist, I can attest to this difference. I heard my pastor and my family complain voiciferously and constatntly about people doing this or that, or belieivng this or that. But the worst that any of them were ever going to do was sign a petition or vote for or against something. In the end, they were actually tolderant of the things they opposed, because they lived and let live. That did not mean, though, that they did not think they did not have the right to voice their opinions.
And this gets me to another point that needs to be made. Fanatics cannot stand for someone to disagree with them. Thus, they take action to silence their opposition thorugh various forms of intimidation. There are people out there who are free speech fanatics -- meaning, they think that they should have the right to say anything they want without anyone saying anything to or about them or their ideas. The attitude can be summed up thus:
Fanatic: "I believe that we should do X."
Opposition: "No, I think X is a bad idea."
Fanatic: "Opposition is infringing on my freedom of speech to say that we should do X!"
Pick your favorite cause and plug it into X, and you have probably heard someone make the above argument. It is not enough that they are free to say what they want, but others should not be free to criticize them for having said it. That is a form of fanaticism that in fact undermines the freedom of speech.
So fanaticism does not have to be theological in nature. But I do suspect that it is always religious in nature. Marinoff hints at this in the paragraph that ends the short section the above was excerpted from when he says, "Religious reform itself has now reached the other extreme [away from fundamentalism] in the West, whose societies -- from South America to North America to Europe -- hve become so liberalized that millions now have no religious faith whatsoever. This leaves them extremely vulnerable to moral anarchy on the one hand, and to political crusades on the other" (63). In other words, it has led to post-hippy, postmodern anarchy and libertinage -- or to various forms of secular-government religions such as national socialism, fascism, and communism. For many government is now their god. We saw this particularly strongly among the existentialists who, upon embracing atheism, became supporters of Naziism (Heidegger was a lifelong member and never recanted his membership in the party) and communism (Camus, de Beauvoir, and Sartre were all communists, at least for a while). Nietzsche warned against this, pointing out that people did not truly embrace atheism and all that it truly meant, but that they continued to act as good Christians or Jews, only transfering their loyalties to other entities.
What we seem to see now in the United States is a combination of moral anarchy and devotion to government as god among a certain element of the Left. There are people who don't want anyone to judge them for anything they do, but at the same time support the creation of an extremely large, controlling government. They seek to cut all natural social bonds, eliminate all natural social hierarchies, and support the government as the one, true and only social organizer. It's a very unnatural top-down yet egalitarian system. But it is a system conceived of by people who, to paraphrase Nietzsche, cannot conceive of a being greater than themselves. They naturally imagine themselves in charge of the very entity they worship.
WIth a natural set of social systems, we see decentralization and moderation at work. People join various social systems -- churches, neighborhoods, jobs, clubs, etc. -- and there is a natural hierarchy that forms. There is me, and I am in a family, and my family and I are in a neighborhood and go to a church, and each of those are imbeded in a hierarchical organization themselves: the community is in a town, in a county (two in the case of my town) in a state in a nation in a larger culture (the West) in a globalized world; the church is a member of a diocese, etc. As a member of diffferent groups, I am forced to get along with different people. There are people of different ethnic groups in my neighborhood and in my church (and in my family, actually), etc. I am friends with people of different religions and ethnicities due to the different organizations I have been a member of, or because of the places I hang out at. All of which contributes to moderate behavior (it's hard to hate people you know very well, after all). We live moderate lives by acting as we naturally act -- as social mammals -- while struggling against the unfortunate side-effect of evolving as a social mammal, which is hatred of those not in our tribe. We do this not by eliminating social behavior, but by expanding our notion of who is in our tribe. But all of this undermines government-fanaticism, and that is why anti-social efforts have been underway of late: anti-touching rules and even laws, etc. are becoming popular of late. It is part of a kind of fanaticism we have to fight against just as much as we fight against religious fanaticism.
But we have to remember: fanaticism and fundamentalism are not one and the same thing. We have to know that if we are going to fight effectively against fanaticism and make the world safe for moderation.
And this gets me to another point that needs to be made. Fanatics cannot stand for someone to disagree with them. Thus, they take action to silence their opposition thorugh various forms of intimidation. There are people out there who are free speech fanatics -- meaning, they think that they should have the right to say anything they want without anyone saying anything to or about them or their ideas. The attitude can be summed up thus:
Fanatic: "I believe that we should do X."
Opposition: "No, I think X is a bad idea."
Fanatic: "Opposition is infringing on my freedom of speech to say that we should do X!"
Pick your favorite cause and plug it into X, and you have probably heard someone make the above argument. It is not enough that they are free to say what they want, but others should not be free to criticize them for having said it. That is a form of fanaticism that in fact undermines the freedom of speech.
So fanaticism does not have to be theological in nature. But I do suspect that it is always religious in nature. Marinoff hints at this in the paragraph that ends the short section the above was excerpted from when he says, "Religious reform itself has now reached the other extreme [away from fundamentalism] in the West, whose societies -- from South America to North America to Europe -- hve become so liberalized that millions now have no religious faith whatsoever. This leaves them extremely vulnerable to moral anarchy on the one hand, and to political crusades on the other" (63). In other words, it has led to post-hippy, postmodern anarchy and libertinage -- or to various forms of secular-government religions such as national socialism, fascism, and communism. For many government is now their god. We saw this particularly strongly among the existentialists who, upon embracing atheism, became supporters of Naziism (Heidegger was a lifelong member and never recanted his membership in the party) and communism (Camus, de Beauvoir, and Sartre were all communists, at least for a while). Nietzsche warned against this, pointing out that people did not truly embrace atheism and all that it truly meant, but that they continued to act as good Christians or Jews, only transfering their loyalties to other entities.
What we seem to see now in the United States is a combination of moral anarchy and devotion to government as god among a certain element of the Left. There are people who don't want anyone to judge them for anything they do, but at the same time support the creation of an extremely large, controlling government. They seek to cut all natural social bonds, eliminate all natural social hierarchies, and support the government as the one, true and only social organizer. It's a very unnatural top-down yet egalitarian system. But it is a system conceived of by people who, to paraphrase Nietzsche, cannot conceive of a being greater than themselves. They naturally imagine themselves in charge of the very entity they worship.
WIth a natural set of social systems, we see decentralization and moderation at work. People join various social systems -- churches, neighborhoods, jobs, clubs, etc. -- and there is a natural hierarchy that forms. There is me, and I am in a family, and my family and I are in a neighborhood and go to a church, and each of those are imbeded in a hierarchical organization themselves: the community is in a town, in a county (two in the case of my town) in a state in a nation in a larger culture (the West) in a globalized world; the church is a member of a diocese, etc. As a member of diffferent groups, I am forced to get along with different people. There are people of different ethnic groups in my neighborhood and in my church (and in my family, actually), etc. I am friends with people of different religions and ethnicities due to the different organizations I have been a member of, or because of the places I hang out at. All of which contributes to moderate behavior (it's hard to hate people you know very well, after all). We live moderate lives by acting as we naturally act -- as social mammals -- while struggling against the unfortunate side-effect of evolving as a social mammal, which is hatred of those not in our tribe. We do this not by eliminating social behavior, but by expanding our notion of who is in our tribe. But all of this undermines government-fanaticism, and that is why anti-social efforts have been underway of late: anti-touching rules and even laws, etc. are becoming popular of late. It is part of a kind of fanaticism we have to fight against just as much as we fight against religious fanaticism.
But we have to remember: fanaticism and fundamentalism are not one and the same thing. We have to know that if we are going to fight effectively against fanaticism and make the world safe for moderation.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Nader Sues Democratic Party
Good for Ralph Nader for suing the Democratic Party and the Kerry campaign for what he believed were actions taken by them to keep him off the ballot to prevent his "taking votes away" from Kerry. The rules we have on the books in many states make it too easy for the two main parties to keep the elections to themselves. This is anti-democratic! So I hope Nader succeeds, so the American people will have more options. Some new ideas and untraditional candidates might also get people interested in participating in their government for a change.
But let's look forward to the future Presidential debates. It should be law that any candidate who can get his name on the ballot in all 50 states should be allowed in the debates. The current rules are designed merely to make it so that only the Republicans and Democrats are invited. My proposal has the benefit of solving the problem (really, excuse given) of letting everyone "running" on the ballot. I agree we should not necessarily let in every crank on the ballot in a state or two -- but if someone can manage to get on the ballot in every state, then they should be considered a serious candidate.
But let's look forward to the future Presidential debates. It should be law that any candidate who can get his name on the ballot in all 50 states should be allowed in the debates. The current rules are designed merely to make it so that only the Republicans and Democrats are invited. My proposal has the benefit of solving the problem (really, excuse given) of letting everyone "running" on the ballot. I agree we should not necessarily let in every crank on the ballot in a state or two -- but if someone can manage to get on the ballot in every state, then they should be considered a serious candidate.
On the Origin of Law
Laws (all laws in general, including laws of the universe) emerge from the interactions of the elements of the system. With humans, it is interactions within a social system that first give rise to custom-laws, which then develop into government-laws. Government laws are written down codes that have developed in the society at large. Nobody is actually inventing new laws ex nihilo, but rather observe laws emerging, then give then a name. I think if we truly understand the origins of laws, we will be able to more fully understand their role (and what their role should be) in our lives. Should every custom-law be turned into a government-law? Which custom-laws should be? Which should not? Are there some laws that are created in order to create new custom-laws? Are bottom-up laws better (or always, or necessarily better, if they are better) than top-down laws? (My own opinion: they are. Why? Because of the nature of complex systems. Though this does not mean that we don't need the occasional top-down corrective of bad bottom-up custom-laws.)
What does it mean for the understanding of law and justice if we take a complex systems approach to understanding the origins and consequences of law?
What does it mean for the understanding of law and justice if we take a complex systems approach to understanding the origins and consequences of law?
Discipline
Everyone should read this and take it to heart: Education and Discipline
Unless we realize that letting children -- all students, if you are a teacher of any sort -- have their way no matter what, we will continue to have the kinds of societal problems we have been having.
Discipline and disciple (which means "pupil") have the same roots for a reason. Without discpline, you cannot be a pupil, you cannot be a student, you cannot learn. Proper discipline, especially self-discipline, is what gives us true freedom. Liberty is not libertinage. Freedom is not chaos. Freedom is the golden mean between order and chaos -- it is arrived at through discipline.
Unless we realize that letting children -- all students, if you are a teacher of any sort -- have their way no matter what, we will continue to have the kinds of societal problems we have been having.
Discipline and disciple (which means "pupil") have the same roots for a reason. Without discpline, you cannot be a pupil, you cannot be a student, you cannot learn. Proper discipline, especially self-discipline, is what gives us true freedom. Liberty is not libertinage. Freedom is not chaos. Freedom is the golden mean between order and chaos -- it is arrived at through discipline.
WW III
After President Bush suggested that we need to be afraid that Iran getting nuclear weapons could lead to World War III, Denis Kucinich said, "I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health." I suppose, then, that we should also start asking questions about the mental health of French President Sarkozy, who said that a nuclear Iran would mean war. I wonder what Kucinich thinks the Iranians are going to do with a nuclear weapon if they were to get one?
Monday, October 29, 2007
America: A Prophesy
Unless we realize that school is for educating our children, meaning they should not be in charge of them in any way, shape or form;
Unless we realize that universities are there to provide students with a liberal education and are not places where they should even think they are buying a degree just to get a job;
Unless we realize that anything worth having is worth working for;
Unless we realize that we need to all grow up and take responsibility for our actions, thoughts, and education;
Unless we realize that most of us are selfish and petty and have no actual problems -- especially compared to the vast majority of people in the world;
Unless we reestablish and enforce the hierarchy between teacher and student;
Unless we provide students with a moral education;
Unless we stop preventing intelligent, educated people from serving on juries;
Unless we stop avoiding hiring people because they are "over-qualified";
Unless we stop excusing bad behavior;
Unless we realize that we are all in this together;
Unless we realize that the dominance of one way of thinking is cancer, but the dominance of pure plurality of thinking is isolating;
Unless we stop thinking that social issues, international issues, economic issues -- issues concerning government and who we elect -- aren't important;
Unless we take this world seriously;
Unless we take threats to our society seriously;
Unless we take our arts, literature, and culture seriously;
Unless we take beauty seriously;
Unless we take history seriously;
Unless we take truth seriously;
Unless we take justice seriuosly;
Unless we take virue seriously;
Unless we take love seriously;
Unless we reward the good and the deserving and let the bad and the lazy to be punished by the world and society and living itself;
Unless we stop letting the inmates run the assylum;
Unless we start standing up for what we know is right;
Unless we take risks to do what's right . . .
America is doomed.
Unless we realize that universities are there to provide students with a liberal education and are not places where they should even think they are buying a degree just to get a job;
Unless we realize that anything worth having is worth working for;
Unless we realize that we need to all grow up and take responsibility for our actions, thoughts, and education;
Unless we realize that most of us are selfish and petty and have no actual problems -- especially compared to the vast majority of people in the world;
Unless we reestablish and enforce the hierarchy between teacher and student;
Unless we provide students with a moral education;
Unless we stop preventing intelligent, educated people from serving on juries;
Unless we stop avoiding hiring people because they are "over-qualified";
Unless we stop excusing bad behavior;
Unless we realize that we are all in this together;
Unless we realize that the dominance of one way of thinking is cancer, but the dominance of pure plurality of thinking is isolating;
Unless we stop thinking that social issues, international issues, economic issues -- issues concerning government and who we elect -- aren't important;
Unless we take this world seriously;
Unless we take threats to our society seriously;
Unless we take our arts, literature, and culture seriously;
Unless we take beauty seriously;
Unless we take history seriously;
Unless we take truth seriously;
Unless we take justice seriuosly;
Unless we take virue seriously;
Unless we take love seriously;
Unless we reward the good and the deserving and let the bad and the lazy to be punished by the world and society and living itself;
Unless we stop letting the inmates run the assylum;
Unless we start standing up for what we know is right;
Unless we take risks to do what's right . . .
America is doomed.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
The Middle Way, Part 3 (al Qaida vs. moderation)
Marinoff makes a striking point about what it was al Qaida attacked on 9/11. We have heard they attacked us because of our freedoms (partially true, as we will see), and we have heard that they attacked us because of our excesses -- specifically our opposite excesses to their excess of abstinance. But if we had been attacked because of our excesses, we would have likely seen much different targets. Marinoff points out that "extremes of religious and political authority do impose abstinences on everyone, precisely because they will not tolerate moderation. That is why al-Qaida did not target the French Quarter of New Orleans on 9/11. They were not attacking their opposite extreme, namely excess consumption of alcohol; they were attacking something much more important, namely the culture of moderation, which tolerates both extremes" (61). Indeed, the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is an excellent example of numerous extremes. When I went there during Mardi Gras, at one end of the street was a gay bar with numerous gay men out in the street, many of them wearing assless chaps. Going up the street, I saw people in various levels of undress -- including women who were for all intents completely naked. And at the far end of the street, I sawa solemn procession of Catholics carrying a huge wooden cross marching slowly into the crowd. If al-Qaida were truly interested in attacking American excess, and getting a few devout Christians to boot, Mardi Gras in New Orleans would have been the place to do it.
So excess is not what they were attacking. Marinoff explains further: "The virtue of moderation tolerates extremes that are voluntarily chosen, but which do not seek to impose themselves forcibly on others. But moderation cannot tolerate those who use moderation as a weapon against itself. Extremists do not attack our vices; rather, our virtues, such as moderation in the liberty, trust, and tolerance we accord to our fellow travelers. Moderation and tolerance themselves were the primary targets on 9/11, as they are in all such suicide bombings, big or small" (61). Their goal was to push us toward extremism. Their war is against moderation and tolerance. Thus, if we remember Aristotle's golden mean of virtue, we see that their war is against virtue itself. More, it is a war against life itself -- the middle way between death and cancerous growth. They seek to be a cancer on the world, to make everyone like them -- their method is death.
So excess is not what they were attacking. Marinoff explains further: "The virtue of moderation tolerates extremes that are voluntarily chosen, but which do not seek to impose themselves forcibly on others. But moderation cannot tolerate those who use moderation as a weapon against itself. Extremists do not attack our vices; rather, our virtues, such as moderation in the liberty, trust, and tolerance we accord to our fellow travelers. Moderation and tolerance themselves were the primary targets on 9/11, as they are in all such suicide bombings, big or small" (61). Their goal was to push us toward extremism. Their war is against moderation and tolerance. Thus, if we remember Aristotle's golden mean of virtue, we see that their war is against virtue itself. More, it is a war against life itself -- the middle way between death and cancerous growth. They seek to be a cancer on the world, to make everyone like them -- their method is death.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Unfair Sex Conviction Overruled
Genarlow Wilson has been freed by the state supreme court of Georgia, declaring his conviction "cruel and unusual punishment." And what kind of sense was there in the first place to bring charges against a 17 year old boy accused of having oral sex with a 15 year old? Weren't both of them underaged? Much has been made of the fact that this young man was an honor student, a football star and his high school's homecoming king and that he had been offered scholarships by several elite colleges before his conviction. But this conviction would be unfair even if none of that were true about him. But since it is true, and since he did lose out on such scholarships, I think the only fair thing would be for this prosecutor, who misused the law in Georgia -- according to the very lawmaker who wrot ethe law -- to pay for this young man's college education for as long as he wanted to go to college -- even if it led to a PhD., an M.D., or a law degree.
The Middle Way, Part 2 (American Denial)
Lou Marinoff observes in "The Middle Way" that China is on the ascendant, and that Americans seem not to be prepared for it. While I do not necessarily agree that a good Chinese economy is necessarily bad for the U.S. economy (again, the economy is not a pie divided up so some get more only when others get less, but is growing), he is right in saying that "Americans are already steeped in denial regarding the internal deficiencies contributing to their nation's decline -- not only in global public opinion, but crucially in cultural assets -- which means they are not prepared to reverse the damage" (38).
I do not think that Marinoff is saying that we should do everything we can to get everyone to like us. People who do that are not psychologically healthy, and we should not expect a country to do that either. However, it is a sign of some kind of sociopathology when you go out of your way to make people mad. Did the Congress really have to bring up for a vote the resolution against Turkey regarding the Armenians in WWI? Does the U.S. absolutely need anti-missile weapons in Poland and the Czech Republic? These are unnecessary annoyances and provocations. Further, our country needs to avoid the appearance of impropriety -- we need to not only not do some things, we need to make it clear we don't do them. This is why I'm in favor of transparency in most things regarding government. We would go a long way toward improving global public opinion if we were consistent in doing what we say we believe in.
This then brings us to the issue of cultural assets. I think if we give an honest assessment of most of the cultural products of most cultures, we will find far more pop culture than high culture. In fact, what may have been one culture's pop culture can become another one's high culture. Plato seemed to think that tragedy was mere pop culture for the hoi poloi -- his student Aristotle gave us the opinion we now hold of it as being the height of theater. So we do want to be careful about such divisions. But are we creating a public that truly appreciates good art and literature? The cultural elites love works by authors like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon -- works which I myself like, but recognize that to be on the fringe of what the average human being can understand -- while the real best sellers are Christian Romances. There is a huge disconnect between the two that make students think art and literature have nothing to do with their lives and the real world. Our art is in the same situation, as is philosophy. How many people think that philosophy is something that can or should have an impact on our lives? This is because philosophy has turned into something that can noly be accessed by those who have Ph.D.'s in philosophy. This is exacerbated when postmodern philosophers insist that what they do has no value or purpose. If this is the case, why study it? And, if we look at it from a university standpoint, why fund it? Thus, our universities are turning into trade schools, and our students go in expecting to learn a trade and that the purpose of a degree is to get oneself a job. The "liberal" part of liberal education is going out the door, and nobody is making a single objection to it going. But without a liberal education, what will we be but workers in a machine? We will not have the freedom that only liberal education can teach. Literature gives us new worlds to experience. Art lets us see the world in new ways. Philosophy teaches us to know ourselves to live a better life. Or, at least, they once did. Now they are specialist fields as inaccessible to the public as is quantum physics. And that is the real problem: we deny the average citizen access to his own cultural assets. We treat them as something that belongs to an elite. The rest get bread and circuses. This is a dangerous division.
We should count ourselves fortunate that on occasion someone -- typically a filmmaker nowadays -- attempts to bridge this gap. But even so we typically see a gap between what the educated critics like and what the public likes. Why don't people think it is possible to have a work that is both entertaining and beautiful? We need cultural products that tap into all aspects of who we are as people: they should be entertaining, beautiful, intelligent, and emotional. Indeed, let me go back to one of the things in the list in particular: beauty. It seems that it is beauty which we are missing in our lives. And it is beauty which is the Middle Way which Marinoff seems to really be getting at in his book. The Golden Mean is a principle of beauty. This is why Aristotle, in talking about virtue as a mean between two extremes also says that virtue aims at the beautiful ("to kalon," typically translated as "the good" or "the noble"). It is beauty which is missing in America -- and in the world at large.
But there is a great deal of confusion about what beuaty is, so let me supply a list of what, together, constitutes beauty:
Beauty has the following features:
Complexity within Simplicity
Digital-Analog
Emergent from Conflict
Evolutionary (changes over time)
Generative and Creative
Hierarchical Organization
Play
Reflexivity or Feedback
Rhythmicity
Rule-Based
Scalar Self-Similarity
Time-Bound
Unity in Multiplicity
The following agonally unified opposites also constitute beauty:
Native – Foreign
Light – Shadow
Logos – Eros
Emotion – Intellect (Reason)
Conscious – Unconscious
Soul – Technology
Feeling – Thinking
General – Specific
Universal – Particular
I am convinced that there is a strong relationship between things that are evolving, growing, self-organizing, and emergentist and beauty. Thus, let us look at the features of self-organization and see why:
Emergence
Complexity
Cohesion (digital-analog)
Openness
Bottom-up-Emergence
Downward Causation
Non-linearity
Feedback loops, Circular causality
Information
Relative Chance
Hierarchy
Globalisation and localisation
Unity in Plurality (Generality and Specificity)
Emergence has the following features:
Synergism (productive interaction between parts)
Novelty
Irreduceability
Unpredictability
Coherence/Correlation
Historicity
When our cultural assets contain the above features, our culture will be healthy. When our government, our economy, our society and our selves have these features, then each of them will also be healthy. This is the true Middle Way. But you cannot cure a sick patient who denies that he's even sick.
I do not think that Marinoff is saying that we should do everything we can to get everyone to like us. People who do that are not psychologically healthy, and we should not expect a country to do that either. However, it is a sign of some kind of sociopathology when you go out of your way to make people mad. Did the Congress really have to bring up for a vote the resolution against Turkey regarding the Armenians in WWI? Does the U.S. absolutely need anti-missile weapons in Poland and the Czech Republic? These are unnecessary annoyances and provocations. Further, our country needs to avoid the appearance of impropriety -- we need to not only not do some things, we need to make it clear we don't do them. This is why I'm in favor of transparency in most things regarding government. We would go a long way toward improving global public opinion if we were consistent in doing what we say we believe in.
This then brings us to the issue of cultural assets. I think if we give an honest assessment of most of the cultural products of most cultures, we will find far more pop culture than high culture. In fact, what may have been one culture's pop culture can become another one's high culture. Plato seemed to think that tragedy was mere pop culture for the hoi poloi -- his student Aristotle gave us the opinion we now hold of it as being the height of theater. So we do want to be careful about such divisions. But are we creating a public that truly appreciates good art and literature? The cultural elites love works by authors like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon -- works which I myself like, but recognize that to be on the fringe of what the average human being can understand -- while the real best sellers are Christian Romances. There is a huge disconnect between the two that make students think art and literature have nothing to do with their lives and the real world. Our art is in the same situation, as is philosophy. How many people think that philosophy is something that can or should have an impact on our lives? This is because philosophy has turned into something that can noly be accessed by those who have Ph.D.'s in philosophy. This is exacerbated when postmodern philosophers insist that what they do has no value or purpose. If this is the case, why study it? And, if we look at it from a university standpoint, why fund it? Thus, our universities are turning into trade schools, and our students go in expecting to learn a trade and that the purpose of a degree is to get oneself a job. The "liberal" part of liberal education is going out the door, and nobody is making a single objection to it going. But without a liberal education, what will we be but workers in a machine? We will not have the freedom that only liberal education can teach. Literature gives us new worlds to experience. Art lets us see the world in new ways. Philosophy teaches us to know ourselves to live a better life. Or, at least, they once did. Now they are specialist fields as inaccessible to the public as is quantum physics. And that is the real problem: we deny the average citizen access to his own cultural assets. We treat them as something that belongs to an elite. The rest get bread and circuses. This is a dangerous division.
We should count ourselves fortunate that on occasion someone -- typically a filmmaker nowadays -- attempts to bridge this gap. But even so we typically see a gap between what the educated critics like and what the public likes. Why don't people think it is possible to have a work that is both entertaining and beautiful? We need cultural products that tap into all aspects of who we are as people: they should be entertaining, beautiful, intelligent, and emotional. Indeed, let me go back to one of the things in the list in particular: beauty. It seems that it is beauty which we are missing in our lives. And it is beauty which is the Middle Way which Marinoff seems to really be getting at in his book. The Golden Mean is a principle of beauty. This is why Aristotle, in talking about virtue as a mean between two extremes also says that virtue aims at the beautiful ("to kalon," typically translated as "the good" or "the noble"). It is beauty which is missing in America -- and in the world at large.
But there is a great deal of confusion about what beuaty is, so let me supply a list of what, together, constitutes beauty:
Beauty has the following features:
Complexity within Simplicity
Digital-Analog
Emergent from Conflict
Evolutionary (changes over time)
Generative and Creative
Hierarchical Organization
Play
Reflexivity or Feedback
Rhythmicity
Rule-Based
Scalar Self-Similarity
Time-Bound
Unity in Multiplicity
The following agonally unified opposites also constitute beauty:
Native – Foreign
Light – Shadow
Logos – Eros
Emotion – Intellect (Reason)
Conscious – Unconscious
Soul – Technology
Feeling – Thinking
General – Specific
Universal – Particular
I am convinced that there is a strong relationship between things that are evolving, growing, self-organizing, and emergentist and beauty. Thus, let us look at the features of self-organization and see why:
Emergence
Complexity
Cohesion (digital-analog)
Openness
Bottom-up-Emergence
Downward Causation
Non-linearity
Feedback loops, Circular causality
Information
Relative Chance
Hierarchy
Globalisation and localisation
Unity in Plurality (Generality and Specificity)
Emergence has the following features:
Synergism (productive interaction between parts)
Novelty
Irreduceability
Unpredictability
Coherence/Correlation
Historicity
When our cultural assets contain the above features, our culture will be healthy. When our government, our economy, our society and our selves have these features, then each of them will also be healthy. This is the true Middle Way. But you cannot cure a sick patient who denies that he's even sick.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Future Human Evolution
This is one of the dumbest things I've heard of, for many reasons.
While there does seem to be some evidence of the division into "gracile" and "robust" forms in primates, Oliver Curry mistakenly says that chimpanzees split into robust chimps and gracile bonobos. This is not true. The common ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos split into the descendants of chimps and a second group that itself split into the descendants of the bonobos and the descendants of the humans. We can see this in the fact that we are more closely related to bonobos and that we share some anatomical and behavioral features with bonobos, though many of our behaviors more closely resemble chimps, while bonobos physically resemble chimps more. So the evolutionary picture is more complex than Curry suggests.
The next bizarre statement, from an evolutionary point of view, is that "human evolution will reach its peak in about the year 3000." I don't know what this could possibly mean. Evolution does not have "peaks" in the sense that a species is as good as it gets. Species are always adapting to their environments. Humans are a strong generalist, and we are thus highly adaptive to practically every terrestrial environment. This leads into the nonsense about genetic regression. There is no such thing as genetic regression -- there is only more or less adaptive species to their environment.
This then leads me to the issue of evolution itself. When a species is as mobile as our own -- especially in the modern world -- natural selection as adaptation to the environment no longer occurs. What we have now in control is population dynamics, where a genetic change spreads rapidly and evenly throughout a population after a few generations. Now, Curry mentions sexual selection. But I see no evidence for differences in sexual selection. All the studies that have been done my evolutionary psychologists show that people universally find the same general proportions physically attractive. Globalization is, again, even eliminating many of the cultural differences that may (as unlikely as that is, since those differences were never actually substantial) have contributed to sexual selection. The elements contributing to intelligence, as I noted in a previous post, are so numerous as to make it difficult to determine what combinations are best.
This is not to say that over the time span he mentions -- 100,000 years -- that human evolution won't occur. Sure by then we will have colonized the moon and Mars, perhaps even the stars. And one would expect those isolated populations to evolve. But to keep things more down-to-earth, Curry fails to mention another type of evolution. It is a more important kind, and it is the kind that gave rise to human intelligence itself. And that is the evolution of more complexity. It is possible that certain people might evolve to have more complex minds -- perhaps as much more complex than humans as humans are over chimps and bonobos. It is unlikely they would appear to be physically any different, as the difference would be in the minds of the people who emerged into the more complex forms ot thinking. This kind of evolution seems more likely, and it seems more immediately likely. And if Claire Graves, Don Beck, and Christopher Cowan are right, it may have already happened in a small group of people. That is a much more interesting kind of evolution in my book.
While there does seem to be some evidence of the division into "gracile" and "robust" forms in primates, Oliver Curry mistakenly says that chimpanzees split into robust chimps and gracile bonobos. This is not true. The common ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos split into the descendants of chimps and a second group that itself split into the descendants of the bonobos and the descendants of the humans. We can see this in the fact that we are more closely related to bonobos and that we share some anatomical and behavioral features with bonobos, though many of our behaviors more closely resemble chimps, while bonobos physically resemble chimps more. So the evolutionary picture is more complex than Curry suggests.
The next bizarre statement, from an evolutionary point of view, is that "human evolution will reach its peak in about the year 3000." I don't know what this could possibly mean. Evolution does not have "peaks" in the sense that a species is as good as it gets. Species are always adapting to their environments. Humans are a strong generalist, and we are thus highly adaptive to practically every terrestrial environment. This leads into the nonsense about genetic regression. There is no such thing as genetic regression -- there is only more or less adaptive species to their environment.
This then leads me to the issue of evolution itself. When a species is as mobile as our own -- especially in the modern world -- natural selection as adaptation to the environment no longer occurs. What we have now in control is population dynamics, where a genetic change spreads rapidly and evenly throughout a population after a few generations. Now, Curry mentions sexual selection. But I see no evidence for differences in sexual selection. All the studies that have been done my evolutionary psychologists show that people universally find the same general proportions physically attractive. Globalization is, again, even eliminating many of the cultural differences that may (as unlikely as that is, since those differences were never actually substantial) have contributed to sexual selection. The elements contributing to intelligence, as I noted in a previous post, are so numerous as to make it difficult to determine what combinations are best.
This is not to say that over the time span he mentions -- 100,000 years -- that human evolution won't occur. Sure by then we will have colonized the moon and Mars, perhaps even the stars. And one would expect those isolated populations to evolve. But to keep things more down-to-earth, Curry fails to mention another type of evolution. It is a more important kind, and it is the kind that gave rise to human intelligence itself. And that is the evolution of more complexity. It is possible that certain people might evolve to have more complex minds -- perhaps as much more complex than humans as humans are over chimps and bonobos. It is unlikely they would appear to be physically any different, as the difference would be in the minds of the people who emerged into the more complex forms ot thinking. This kind of evolution seems more likely, and it seems more immediately likely. And if Claire Graves, Don Beck, and Christopher Cowan are right, it may have already happened in a small group of people. That is a much more interesting kind of evolution in my book.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)