Credo Ergo Sum

The really scary thing about the current environmental crisis

2008-04-30T19:53:00.003-05:00

Environment buzzwords have been on everyone’s lips recently. Global warming, carbon footprints, eco-friendly, sustainability – you can’t open a newspaper or magazine without seeing them. More people are thinking about the environment than ever before. We are walking to work, buying reusable shopping bags, eating organic, replacing incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescents and countless other small measures we hope will add up and save the environment. The United States government is promising the EPA will step up to the plate and save us from ourselves, while the president – in the name of Homeland Security – sets aside more than 30 environmental regulations [Richard Marosi and Nicole Gaouette, “Environmental rules waived for Mexican border fence,” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2008, News section, Online edition.] to finish the precious Mexican border fence before the Mexican economy collapses when we’ve burned through all their oil. Television advertisements show how you can be green while wearing cotton – that oh-so-environmentally-friendly fabric – and offset the carbon emissions from your totally unnecessary SUV by purchasing recycled paper. It’s chic to be environmentally conscious.

But I’m actually not here to talk about the efficacy of small steps taken by consumers, or how both the government and the corporations talk out of both sides of their mouths on this issue. I’m not even here to try to convince you of the reality – and gravity – of global warming. My question is even more serious, I feel. What if the government imposed – and took more steps to enforce – stricter environmental regulations. Would large corporations comply? Does the government, in this age of outsourcing and endless litigation, have the power to make the business world stand at attention anymore?

There are several factors I think it important to discuss while I explore answers to this question. First, I will explore a brief description of globalization, then an outline of views on what the government’s role in environmental protection should be, followed by a description of the goals of corporations and how these relate to concerns for the state of the environment. I will use Martin Wolf’s opinions, expressed in Why Globalization Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004], to contrast my own on the given topics.

Wolf defines globalization as the “free movement of goods, services, labour and capital, thereby creating a single market in inputs and outputs; and full national treatment for foreign investors so that, economically speaking, there are no foreigners.” [pp. 14] For the purposes of my discussion, it is appropriate to point out that this includes the ability of corporations to outsource their labour.

There are as many views on how involved the government should be in people’s lives as there are people, it seems. They range from a government limited to only protecting from force, fraud and theft and enforcing contracts to a government that controls everything from business to religion. I am going to assume, for the sake of space and time, that we can agree environmental regulations, at least to some degree, are beneficial to us all, and therefore compliance with them and enforcement of them is desirable.

At this time it becomes relevant to describe the two broad economic categories into which the world falls: the centre and the periphery. The centre has also been referred to as the First World or the developed world, and includes mostly democratic industrialized countries such as the US, the EU and Japan. The periphery has been known as the Third World or the developing world, and includes sub-Saharan Africa, some Asian and Latin American countries, such as Nigeria, Indonesia and Guatemala.

A common concern with increasing globalization is that corporations will move their unskilled manufacturing away from centre countries that have higher environmental regulation standards to periphery countries that have lower standards. Besides just having lower standards in general, several factors, including lack of infrastructure and, in some cases, abundant corruption, cause periphery countries to have a harder time enforcing their laws, including those regarding taxes and environmental regulations. [pp. 274]

So what do the corporations want to do? I think it is quite clear that, no matter what the PR department says, no matter what shows up in the ‘mission statement,’ corporations are here to make money. That is what capitalism is all about, after all. So, when trying to imagine what a corporation will do in a given situation, just remember that bottom line. In fact, let’s imagine a typical American corporation (we’ll call it TAC). For each scenario I describe, we can use the corporate prime directive to figure out what the course of action for TAC would be.

The government imposes new, costly environmental regulations. TAC can choose to stay in the US and abide by the new regulations – either through new technologies or new procedures; stay in the US, disobey them and tie the government up in litigation; or move the offending processes to a country that either doesn’t have strict regulations and/or can’t enforce them. While Wolf thinks TAC will usually decide to go with the former [pp. 266], I don’t see this being cheaper a vast majority of the time, because if they choose to move labour costs are less and they wouldn’t have to follow any of those expensive regulations. If they choose to litigate and stay, they’re probably not changing their practices. Wolf suggests that leaving may tarnish their public image [pp. 272], but as we tend to be as financially motivated as TAC, I don’t see it being a problem as long as the product stays cheap and they throw us a feel-good advertising bone or two (such as the ‘green’ cotton ad).

TAC has decided to stay in the US, but not follow the regulations. Eventually, the government catches on – probably only after it affects some third party in a major way. TAC could pay up ASAP or litigate ad infinitum; meanwhile, are they going to stay and shape up or leave?

Although I think these few examples have shown quite nicely that it’s money, not upholding the law, that concerns TAC, there are a few other objections to my position I wish to address.

What am I complaining about? Wolf would ask; after all, “[e]nvironmental laws are generally much tougher than they were twenty years ago.” [pp. 254] Shouldn’t I be glad about that and stop wishing for the stars? I don’t think it is unreasonable to reach for the stars in this case. Yes, laws are tougher than they used to be – but we also know so much more about the effect we have on the environment than we used to. The pace of our law-tightening is not keeping up with our research advances. The point is not to get away with as much pollution as we possibly can, the point is to do as much as we can to eliminate negative externalities in the future, and make up for all past ones.

But what about factors dependent upon location? I am not saying that every corporation will move everything to the periphery. What I am saying is that those factors that are cheaper to do overseas, will be done overseas. And when factors are moved to the periphery, they will be executed in a way that is less environmentally conscious than it would be in the centre. This doesn’t affect every corporation, every field, every sector, but it affects enough of them to be concerned. And I would like to remind everyone that communication is only going to become faster and more streamlined. It will become easier and easier to do in the periphery what you once needed to do around a hotbed of research and development.

I want to make it clear that it is not outsourcing itself that is of chief concern here – while that might also be unethical, it is a debate for another time. I am just as outraged at the corporation that stays and ignores regulations as I am at the corporations that outsource so they don’t have to bother with piddledy regulations. The environment is a collective, global entity. Raping Mother Earth in China is just as bad as raping her in the US, even if we Americans don’t feel the effects right away.

All that is gold does not glitter

2008-02-22T12:31:00.002-06:00

I'm going to level with you, and hope that gets me somewhere I haven't gotten yet.

I've been feeling guilty for not posting to my blog more often. After a brief spurt months and months ago of metaphysical exploration in the manner of Descartes (which, by the way, was very important to me at the time), the extent of my posts has basically been course essays with a few poems thrown in.

And this is not what I want.

I'm not especially busy, as the amount of time I spend on Facebook attests, so why haven't I been doing what I say I want to do with my life - talk to people through the written word and motivate change - instead of playing Scrabulous? I seem to have gotten caught up in the mechanism of my life and displaced my goals. Ugh!

This is not to say I haven't been progressing at all. I was recently informed that I am to be published in my university's literary journal. I am keeping up in my classes (for the most part) and am excited about writing an essay due next week. I have been participating in high-stress social situations and partially enjoying them (or at least going back for more). I have a new job, at which I am "kicking ass" (my boss' words, not mine). I have been keeping up with the blogs I read. So, my life is going pretty well on several fronts. Not that you want to hear about that. How people's lives are going well is not nearly so interesting as when catastrophe strikes.

But. Goal displacement. Right.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't understand why I can't seem to motivate myself to do this thing I know I want to do. Hypotheses, anyone?

I want to think of myself as flouting the goals and means of mainstream American society, but here I am, sitting on my ass getting high, scarfing pizza, and watching cyst videos on YouTube (which, if you have a strong stomach, can eat up hours) in between days of going to my public university and sitting through classes which really don't have any bearing on real life, when what I want to be doing is preparing organic, local, sustainably-raised quiche while talking about metaphysics with my beloved before sitting down to write poetry between the love-making and bed. After a day of saving the world.

Damn socialization to instant gratification.

So I guess my conclusion is...that I'm going to try to post more often, but give myself some slack as to the content/subject matter.

Women in Roman love poetry: mistress, poet, and letter writer

2008-01-18T16:57:00.000-06:00

As a woman of the 21^st century who has always felt like she perhaps once belonged to another time period, the study of the lives of women of multiple cultures and eras has always held a special place in my scholastic interests. When trying to figure out how Roman women of the Augustan era actually lived, a vital resource is the literature featuring or at least mentioning them. Although much can of course be discerned through other archaeological media, literature remains a primary means for study.

Roman love elegy holds a wealth of information particularly about the relationships between these women and their extramarital lovers. Selected works of the poets Catullus, Propertius, Sulpicia, and Ovid are what I will focus on for the purpose of this essay. Each of these poets has a lover to whom they address poems or about whom they write poems: Catullus’ Lesbia, Propertius’ Cynthia, Sulpicia’s Cerinthus, and Ovid’s Corinna. Each of these subjects may or may not have corresponded closely to a historical figure. I am not particularly interested in whether or not scholars can point to a particular person and say ‘Aha! This is the real Lesbia!’ I am concerned with how closely these poetical works corresponded to reality in general. There is quite a bit of difference in saying that my lover visited Germany and while she was there I wrote her love poetry telling her how her cat was faring while she was away and saying that often lovers have to be separated and correspondence is able to pass between them assuring them of conditions back at home, even if a more common theme in Latin elegy is complaints of a separation as can be seen in Sulpicia’s tale of her ‘hateful birthday’ which is to be celebrated in the country without Cerinthus[1] and Propertius’ numerous grumblings that Cynthia is purposely spending time away from him with little care for his feelings.[2]

Still, attention must be taken to realise that a male poet’s portrayal may have considerable discrepancy between how they perceived and described these women’s lives and what their lives were actually like. Unless you have experienced a situation yourself, a certain amount of imagination must be utilized. This is part of what makes writing interesting and enjoyable to do, but can be a bit tricky to carry out accurately as well as believably. Even with female poets, there is the difference between reality and fiction that characterises all poetry. The audience of these authors must also be considered. Writing works for their poet friends to read would be different than writing things to be spread at large in the forum and different from writing things directly to their lovers – even as they realise that these epistles may well have had audiences that they did not intend or expect. Sulpicia herself acknowledges this particular dilemma, voicing a wish for the courage to blatantly send ‘unsealed tablets’ to her lover.[3]

Then again, if the literature bore absolutely no resemblance to reality, would it have had the audience that it must have had to have survived this long? The best fiction is often said to come from experience, so it holds that fiction bearing little or no resemblance to real experience would be of lesser quality and thus less likely to be preserved these two millennia. The strategy then, perhaps, to take is one of acceptance that nonetheless holds a healthy scepticism in the wings: observing everything carefully while noting the context. There are a few specific aspects of Roman women which I wish to explore in this way: how they behaved as mistresses and what sort of cultured skills they had especially as poets and letter writers as represented in Latin love elegy. Because I am considering the work of both men and women I will be able to discuss these aspects from the male viewpoint and from the perspective of a woman herself.

Unsurprisingly, the main of the poetry describes the qualities these women displayed as mistresses. A closely related string of themes is that the lovers are being kept physically apart in some way, whether by distance, chaperones, or infidelity.

The very way in which some of the poems are written suggests correspondence between the lovers in written form, telling us that women wrote to their lovers at least sometimes. These were educated women. Ovid demands a ‘long letter’ from Corinna via her hairdresser Napë, only to change his mind a few lines later, not wanting to ‘tire her fingers pushing a stylus,’ letting us know that it would have indeed been Corinna herself writing to him, not a learned slave transcribing her words.[4] As mentioned above, several of Propertius’ poems lament that Cynthia is off gallivanting in faraway places without him, which we can presume would necessitate letter writing.

Ovid beseeches a stoic ‘poor wretch’ of a porter who will not let him in to see his beloved.[5] Surely if she had wished to see him she would have instructed the porter to allow him in? Propertius speaks in the voice of his mistress’ doorway, which complains about all it has to endure, including the ‘long vigils of a tragic supplicant’ who cannot gain entrance.[6]

The lover often has to abide interference from the husband, to which he reacts jealously, conveniently forgetting that he is the “other man.” My favourite example of this is Ovid’s dinner party poem in which he instructs Corinna on how to behave while dining with her boorish husband: signal her thoughts to Ovid with ‘the language of eyebrows and fingers,’ and ‘refuse all food he has tasted first,’ but ‘above all don’t kiss him!’[7] And besides these horrid husbands, the women will insist on taking lovers other than the poets. Lesbia, with ‘her adulterers, three hundred together’ provokes Catullus to retort (semi-) publicly, sending her a message through his two friends.[8] In adorning herself in a way that suggests she is ‘preparing to go to a new man,’ Cynthia causes Propertius ‘so much pain.’[9] Infidelity is not limited to the women, however, as Cerinthus goes ‘chasing after hookers and spinning-girls and whores’ in a most vulgar fashion, neglecting his high-born mistress.[10]

One matter that Propertius and Ovid in particular like to write on is their mistress’ anger. Cynthia’s tongue is cutting and witty (also a fantastic quality in a poet, by the way), most notably when she catches Propertius sneaking in after a night of debauchery her enjoyed without her.[11] She actually speaks in the first person in this poem, giving yet another dimension to the “he said she said” nature of these men reporting on women’s personalities, qualities and activities. Ovid relates Corinna’s jealous anger over supposedly the most innocent of things – glances, compliments – although he himself is carrying on with her maid.[12] In another poem he talks about an old crone, Dipsas, giving Corinna lessons on how to balance her life, keeping her suitors and husband in their proper places.[13] You can imagine how her anger over one of Ovid’s misbehaviours could drive her to this measure.

A perhaps more pleasant theme shows happy times spent together. Ovid recounts a sultry summer afternoon spent on a couch with Corinna, who is – for him – the embodiment of perfection, with ‘faultless beauty.’[14] Catullus highly values Lesbia’s kisses, completely devoting two poems to them, both relating to desire for uncountable numbers of her sweet kisses.[15]

Still one more recurring subject is the mistress’ illness, which lends an opportunity for the dutiful lover to dote upon her. A fevered Sulpicia sends for Cerinthus, needing to know if he’s worried about her, for if he isn’t, it’s not worth getting better.[16] Propertius prays to Jupiter to save his ‘afflicted girl,’ citing Jove’s interest in beautiful girls as motivation enough to turn the tides of illness.[17] Ovid asks Isis for intervention as Corinna’s self-inflicted abortion has gone horribly awry, even as, in the next poem, he chastises Corinna for being so vain and rash.[18]

Propertius works the hardest to remind his readers of the cultivated talents of Roman women, as Cynthia is an accomplished poet and avid correspondent. He makes numerous references to her talent with the lyre[19] and refers to her as ‘sophisticated’ more than once.[20] Sulpicia is an extremely talented poet, as we have remnants of her work even though she was a woman, and most of her poems are in epistle form.[21]

Clearly, close inspection of Latin love elegy reveals women multidimensional and complex. Unfortunately, we learn almost exclusively of high class women through this genre but the various themes of elegy demonstrate their personalities and talents to us quite thoroughly. Whether or not the women described in the poems correspond precisely to historical figures, Augustan women would have possessed similar characteristics.

Sources for English Translation of the Text

(for easy reference on the part of the author)

Corelis, Jon. Roman Erotic Elegy. Salzburg, Austria: University of Salzburg Press, 1995. http://www.geocities.com/romanelegy (accessed December 27, 2007).

Katz, Vincent. The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius. Woodstock, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Lee, Guy. Ovid’s Amores. New York: Viking Press, 1968.

---. The Poems of Catullus. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.

[1] Sulpicia 2, ln 1

[2] Propertius 1.8, 1.11 and 1.12

[3] Sulpicia 1, ln 7-8

[4] Ovid 1.11, ln 19, 23

[5] Ovid 1.6, ln 1

[6] Propertius 1.16, ln 14

[7] Ovid 1.4, ln 19, 33, 38

[8] Catullus 11, ln 17-18

[9] Propertius 1.15, ln 8, 3

[10] Sulpicia 4, ln 3-4

[11] Propertius 1.3, especially ln 35-46

[12] Ovid 2.7-8

[13] Ovid 1.8

[14] Ovid 1.5, ln 17-18

[15] Catullus 5, 7

[16] Sulpicia 5

[17] Propertius 2.28

[18] Ovid 2.13-14

[19] Propertius 1.2 ln 28, 1.3 ln 42

[20] Propertius 1.2 ln 26, 1.7 ln 13

[21] Sulpicia 3, 4, 5, 6

71119

2007-11-19T16:59:00.000-06:00

it’s morning

I’m sitting here feeling the weight

of my maiden’s breasts in my hands

trying

to imagine what they would feel like

pendulous and heavy with milk

how it would feel to nourish a baby

with these

because I’ve fed children

but never from my own body

everyone talks about the great connection it forges,

breast-feeding a baby

when does that tie grow weak?

fray

sever?

and who feels it more

the child or the mother?

I let down my hair, cascading, around my shoulders

covering me

I wish it could hide me

an invisibility cloak

sheltering me so that blows

physical and emotional

may miss their mark

instead of lodging,

an aching arrow,

between my breasts

I want to rip it out, this arrow,

tear it from my flesh

break the shaft over my knee

and hurl the point far away from me

so I never have to feel it again

but I am afraid

that in removing it

I may destroy my own heart

or worse, that I might see,

reflected on the razor-sharp point,

myself

and what is yet to be

so what do I do with this

this bond

forged in the womb and stretched across the years

it used to be strong

stronger than reason

now all I can see are the holes, the innumerable patches,

tattered and hoary with age

culminating finally with this arrow

this wretched arrow

in my heart

The Ecology of World Hunger

2007-11-08T19:04:00.000-06:00

Salutations, dear reader. I don’t know your name, your gender, the color of your hair, your ethnicity, or your political ideology, but I do know one thing about you (with 99.9999% certainty, through sheer probability alone, but we’ll get to that later): you and I are of the same culture. Now, don’t get offended. Yes, I am your average 5^th-generation American mongrel, and you may be pure Japanese going back for as long as there has been a Japan, but that’s not what I’m talking about. While our ethnicities may be very different, what we share is a common cultural world view, a world view that has been around for the last 10,000 years, give or take. This world view that has spread throughout the East and West alike, leaving only tiny pockets of other cultures untouched, numbering somewhat less than 100,000 people total, making this vast culture the culture of 99.9999% of the globe. I first became aware of the commonality of global culture while reading different works by author Daniel Quinn. Where relevant, I will refer to specific examples and terms Quinn has used, but as much as possible I will try to explain the situation in my own way, as it relates to the specific issue with which I am presently concerned, that is, world hunger.

Ah, finally, I’m getting to the point. This is what I’m really talking about, world hunger, just another of the problems we’ve been trying to fix, like global warming or the destruction of the rainforests. Surely I don’t need to draw this global culture idea into the fray, do I? Sit back, my friend, and listen.

Before I begin to explain how we came to have this massive hunger problem, I must explain a concept or two. When I say that a certain group will not do Z because Z is not evolutionarily stable, this does not mean that no one has ever done Z. It means that those who have done Z are no longer around because doing Z results in elimination from the gene pool. Therefore, if a certain group is around, they have not been doing Z. Please remember that we are speaking on an evolutionary scale, where it may take hundreds of thousands of years to weed a trait completely out of the gene pool.

The first modern humans appeared about 100,000 years ago somewhere in Africa. They spread out over the globe, developing their own ways of living each suited to their particular locales. There were as many ways to live as there were peoples. Some peoples hunted for all of their food, some hunted a little and gathered a little, some gathered a lot and planted a little, some planted a lot and gathered a little and hunted a little. Diversity is, after all, the key to an evolutionarily stable ecology. This life was fine for them, for 90,000 years. I am not saying that it was a paradise, that humans during this period were free from any negative emotions, that they were free of problems inside the tribe caused by jealousy or anger, such as murder or infidelity.

What I am saying is that there was tolerance between tribes - indeed, between species. That is to say that humans, like lions and deer and trout, respected the law of limited competition. Quinn has phrased the law as follows: “You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food.”[1] Tribe A might give a show of force to Tribe B to protect their territory and their resources, but they won’t massacre Tribe B or take over their territory, because such a course of action is not evolutionarily stable.

I am speaking here of the law of limited competition with regard to humans, but it applies to all of nature. Humanity is not exempt from the effects of disobeying the law of limited competition, any more than they are exempt from the effects of disobeying the law of thermodynamics. This is what makes something a law of nature: its universality. Natural law theory as a formal philosophical theory was expressed first by the Greeks, saying that “the world is a rational order with values and purposes built into its very nature.”[2] Natural law theory is not merely a metaphysical theory however: it is often applied to ethics. What is natural is equated with what is right, what is unnatural is equated with what is wrong. The Christians took well to natural law theory, with one addition: their God, God being the one who built this purpose and value into nature. And because God had created this order, God was the one who had decided what was right and wrong.

Natural law theory has not had many adherents in recent years, due at least in part, albeit perhaps unconsciously, to David Hume’s criticism. He thought it the height of foolishness to equate what is natural with what is right; that move was, in his opinion, completely unphilosophical.[3] Other critics of natural law theory have also regarded negatively the move of drawing morality into natural laws. Nature is what it is, there is no sense, indeed no compelling reason or rationale for placing ethical labels on natural states. I do think there is some merit to this view, but for different reasons than the holders of the view themselves might have. However, we need to return to the story of humanity.

This was how the stage was set 10,000 years ago. In different places all over the globe, within a few hundreds or thousands of years of each other, a few cultures decided to pursue a different kind of agriculture, called totalitarian agriculture by Quinn. It has a new set of precepts, which are contrary to the law of limited competition. They are: 1) food dedicated to human use may be denied to all other species, 2) any species that would compete for human food may be destroyed at will, and 3) food needed by other species may be destroyed at will to make room for the production of human food.[4] This culture change is generally called the First Agricultural Revolution, or the Neolithic Revolution.

The reasons for this sudden shift in food management are not always examined by the average person. You know that this revolution happened of course, but perhaps you have not found it necessary to think too carefully about why it did or what the immediate effects were. One thing is definite: our cultural ancestors did not embrace totalitarian agriculture because it was easier. Two or three hours of labor per day is enough to sustain the average hunter-gatherer, while we zip about with our eight or nine hours workdays – not forgetting, of course, that our farmer forebears often worked 10, 12, or even 16 hour days, and that in some areas of the world people still work those kinds of hours just to make ends meet. The immediate effect of totalitarian agriculture is a population explosion, necessarily followed by a rapid geographical expansion. Now remember that at this time there were thousands of cultures living in relative peace alongside one another. A culture who embraced totalitarian agriculture would soon outgrow its boundaries and need to spread out, obliterating surrounding (and incompatible) cultures. And so the revolution continued, and continues to this day, swelling and swallowing every other culture in its path. This is what I meant when I said we are of the same culture. The food we eat, the way we gain our sustenance, is based on the principles of totalitarian agriculture.

Examining totalitarian agriculture from an evolutionarily stable standard is almost horrifying, and certainly cause for alarm. Not only does it flaunt the law of limited competition at every point, it decreases biodiversity exponentially, leaving the involved ecosystem vulnerable to complete obliteration. It is not surprising to hear that each day more than 200 species are lost to the juggernaut of totalitarian agriculture. The population explosion continues to this day, and we continue to outstrip our resources. We are producing enough food to feed all the people on earth, only for some reason not all the people who need it are getting it: it’s not being distributed equally. So we produce more food. Except you and I know what more food production yields: population growth. Every time. We look at the world around us and we see that people are starving and rather than allow our population numbers to fall so that our current food supply is accurate, we respond with public outcry and take steps to increase our food production. The problem is increased food supply equals still greater population growth. So once again our numbers rise, outstrip our food sources, and people starve.

In producing more food, we are not alleviating the problem of unequal distribution, we are just fuelling population expansion, which will amplify the effects of the unequal distribution problem and continue to have devastating consequences for the sustainability of the global ecosystem. Because charity is constantly a part of our world, so too is population explosion, disparity of wealth, and starvation.

Common explanations of natural law theory justify this egotistical cultural movement by saying that that humans are the natural apex of the world, or that God made the world for man to use. I find this world view to be part of totalitarian agriculture. In taking the whole of worthy food production into our own hands, we are in effect saying that it is our right to do so, that it is right to do so. I am here to offer a breath of life for natural law theory, and a ray of hope for the world as a whole. What is natural is not right merely because it is natural; it is right because it is what works, it is what has worked, by definition. Sometimes we don’t remember that what is natural is the result of billions of years of refining – why would you want to mess with that? The world is in the state that it is because our culture has forgotten or ignored this. The way to reduce world hunger in the future is not to produce more food, it is to allow the population of the world to come back into balance with the resources sustainably available to it.

Sources:

Quinn, Daniel. (1992). Ishmael. New York: Bantam.

--- (1996). The Story of B. New York: Bantam.

Rachels, James. (2003). The Elements of Moral Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill.

[1] Quinn, Ishmael, p. 129

[2] Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 53

[3] Ibid, p. 56

[4]Quinn, The Story of B, p. 260

Recipe Special

2007-11-04T15:10:00.000-06:00

Taking a departure from my normal conscientious-ish postings...I discovered this delicious soup this afternoon. Not quite sure what to call it, sorry. Suggestions?

1 C mixed dried beans
2 cubes vegetable bullion
1 jar Uncle Ben's Szcheuan Chilli sauce (500g, about 2 C, ish)
8 C H2O

Bring to boiling and let simmer for several hours...I think I let it for about 6...until most of the liquid has boiled off.

Result: a lusciously spicy vegetable soup. Almost a little too spicy for me, but the beans balance it off. So spectacular I just had to share!

Updated Cunt

2007-10-24T16:32:00.000-05:00

Ooo! I was asked for an update on my previous post. So here's a list of how well I kept up with those:

1. Okay, haven't been so good about tracking the cycles. BUT I am paying a lot of attention to the phases of the moon and the tides.
2. Um, yeah...I have a hard enough time finding anything over here, much less trying to find alternatives. But I'm going to look into non-massive-corportation stuff when I get back home.
3. Only the medicines mandated by my psychiatrist, no caffeine (!), and little alcohol.
4. No published stuff yet, but I am writing again. Hadn't written anything in a long, long time. Feels good to be back on the horse.
5. Hehe. Of course this is the one that I've fulfilled. Yep, might be uncomfortable to converse with me sometimes.
6. I buy from small stores as much as possible.
7. The downloading is going well! I recommend Limewire.
8. Am definitely more mindful. I feel like some spy or something, constantly aware of my circumstances. Also looking out for other women. Girls gotta stick together.
9. Yeah, don't watch TV anymore.
10. Yay, I'm doing this one too! Google Reader feeds save my life.
11. So far, haven't gone to one...
12. No chess playing, sorry.
13. Haven't had a telemarketer call to do this to. Jehovah's Witness', here I come! Okay, maybe not. Maybe just the Pentecostal that keeps accosting me in the park.

So, that's fair to middling. Not great, but progress.

Music: the greatest cultural denominator

2007-10-04T16:51:00.000-05:00

Music is the lowest common denominator among people. Every culture has music in some way, shape or form. There are so many cultural barriers: religion, language, climate, food, political and economic systems, just to name a few. Music is an expression of primal emotion, first and foremost, and as such can be recognized and empathized with just as emotion is. I feel it is as critical as eating, an opinion shared by ethnomusicologist Thérèse Smith: ‘It is exhilarating to discover that music has as many meanings and contexts as there are cultures and subcultures, and, moreover, that it is a fundamental and essential human activity – not something frivolous or “extra” as it is often considered in the West.’[1]

People have been making music for as long as they have been calling themselves people, presumably. The “dawn of civilization” is usually set somewhere around 10,000 BCE, but I’m not talking about civilization. I am talking about people. About humans. The “agricultural revolution” might have done great things for the population size of humanity, but in the long run, I believe it has doomed its partakers to extinction. That, however, is a subject for another day. Music surely had its start long before people began organizing themselves into villages and growing all their own food, just as speaking and dancing did.

At that time, scores of thousands of years ago, music would have been passed on aurally and orally, a practice which in some cultures is maintained to the present day. Although some form of musical notation has been available in some cultures for thousands of years, many cultures remain non-literate to the present day, or they find aural/oral transmission advantageous for any of a number of reasons. For example, the Celtic druids required that their music be passed on in this way, so that no written record might get out to those not ready for it, and as stone-singing (a method of dressing and moving stone through the use of complex harmonic choirs: one explanation for the construction of Stonehenge) is part of the mythic legacy surrounding the druids, this practice may well have been pragmatic.

Personally, I find aural/oral transmission to take more skill than following notes on a page. It also lends itself better to improvisation and dynamic growth of the art. After being actually exposed to what people trained aurally/orally can do, I feel that this type of training is certainly not inferior to classical training, as some people are wont to think, but instead may even surpass it and they certainly can supplement each other with astounding results.

But when you learn something in that way, so the memory of it is inside you, not printed externally, it becomes part of your very being in a way that is somehow more vital. Thus ingrained, the music becomes more integral to the culture as well, that is, it becomes part of a sense of cultural identity and tied to other aspects of the culture. This is perhaps why music is often so much a part of religion, because religion is inexorably linked to cultural identity as well.

Culture itself can be defined as a transmission of a way of being sustained over time. Musical culture would then involve transmission of musics to the next generation and beyond. Because there wasn’t a neutral and reliable source of “how things were” a generation or more ago before the advent of recordings, the sense of “the tradition” that is present in many modern musical cultures was probably not the same issue it sometimes is today. If preserving the tradition was an issue in times past it would have a different cast, as one would have to rely on people’s memories of memories – who would you believe, and how would you solve conflicting reports? Recordings themselves present particular problems, as the cultural situation entire cannot possibly be reproduced, and they lose much along the way, a concern expressed by Smith: ‘If through transference a piece of music survives only as sound, devoid of meaning, its interest is severely reduced.’[2]

Irish traditional music is noted (or notorious) for attempting to strictly hold to tradition, for having respect for old music, sometimes treating as ancient what is certainly less than two hundred years old. Each part of the tradition seems to have this attitude to one degree or another, but sean nós singing, with its very name meaning “old style” takes the concept of upholding the tradition to another level.

However, producing a meaningful and universally accepted definition of sean nós seems to cause its own problems. Somhairle MacGill-Eain has described it in this way: ‘that ineffable fusion of music and poetry, in which the melodies seem to grow out of the words and be a simultaneous creation.’[3] I find this to be a rather observant and apt description for several reasons which should become clear as I describe the sean nós singing tradition.

Because sean nós is a style of singing, the songs contained within range from slow airs to love songs to humorous and bawdy tunes. The songs are in Irish, and the melodies display the rhythm and metre of the Irish poetry to wonderful effect. There are often nonsense syllables, especially in the chorus. Many of the songs date from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, although that is certainly not a requirement, and often the poet and/or composer are not known. This era in turn probably owes a great deal to the bardic tradition of the centuries before.

Usually, the song would be sung before an audience who already knows the words and the story behind the song, however the singer still often relates the údar an amhraín (source of a song) before performing.[4] Sean nós would have been a welcome and appropriate addition to any community gathering, from weddings to funerals to house parties. Although the singer usually affects a more or less detached air while singing, the lyrics themselves and the subtleties of performance create a strong bond between singer and audience.

Instead of using “dramatics” or emotional singing, the singer uses spontaneous and improvised variation to convey expression. Such variation might include ornamenting the main melody, changing the rhythm to suit mood and audience, and phrase management.[5] The consonants l, m, n, and r are often sustained to show phrasing, and are sometimes even slipped in extraneously to signal the end of the phrase. Although the improvisation is entirely up to the singer, there are certain general regional trends which can be recognized by the observant listener, the more distinctive ones being those from counties Galway, Donegal, and Waterford. Finally, the singing is unaccompanied.

Like the rest of Irish traditional music, sean nós was in danger of dying out as the gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas of Ireland dwindled. Upon the founding of the Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League) in 1893, preservation and cultivation of interest in the Irish language started to get promoted through the arts. There are now many sean nós competitions, one of the most prominent being Oireachtas na Gaeilge.

It is often difficult for the “outside” listener to appreciate sean nós because it differs in many key ways from the classical style. No dynamics or vibrato, and the use of a bare (and sometimes nasal) voice are common complaints. These qualities make sean nós all the more appealing and engaging for me. Because it is so different from what I am used to, I want to immerse myself in it until it feels like a second skin. I feel fortunate to be able to take a course in sean nós this term, as witnessing a performance in its natural situation and participation are two of the best ways to come to know a music. I sometimes fear that in these days of globalization, less mainstream aspects of cultures may fall by the wayside. Exposing myself to novel and distinct things is my way of coping. I can only hope that many others of my generation and generations to come will feel the same so that precious things like sean nós singing remain a part of the global culture quilt.

[1] Thérèse Smith, p. 25.

[2] Thérèse Smith, p. 23.

[3] in Companion, p. 336.

[4] Fintan Vallely

[5] Ibid.

Resources

Smith, Thérèse, ‘The Study of Oral Traditions of Music,’ 2001, in Éigse Cheol Tíre Irish Folk Music Studies, ed. Hugh Shields, Nicholas Carolan, and Thérèse Smith (Dublin: Mahons) vol. 5-6, 17-28.

Vallely, Fintan, 1999, Companion to Irish Traditional Music (Cork: Cork University Press) 336-344.

Cunt will change my life. I hope.

2007-05-10T09:37:00.000-05:00

Borrowed the book Cunt by Inga Muscio from a friend Tuesday night and finished it yesterday. It gave me so very much to think about. There are now so many lifestyle changes I want to make. This is similar to the way I felt after I finished all of Daniel Quinn's books. And so, to make sure I don't forget how I feel right now, I'm going to go through the book and summarize what I want to do, what changes I want to make.

1. Get a lunar calendar and start figuring out how my cycles relate to the cycles of the moon.
2. Check out the possibility of using sea sponges, the Keeper, or at least tampons not produced by huge corporations.
3. Stop depending on medications so much. For headaches, for abdominal pain, for...everything.
4. Publish a zine...if I figure out that I have anything to say.
5. Stop being embarrassed about talking about menstruating, masturbating, sex, etc.
6. Go to independent grocers, bookstores, etc. or at least buy products from independent producers.
7. Rent/download music, movies, books by men. Buy the ones by women.
8. Start being more aware of the situation I am in. Be more mindful. Look out for other women. Take a self defense course or two?
9. Stop watching TV.
10. Start taking the responsibility to find out what's going on through independent news sources.
11. Stop going to movies with rape scenes in them. If I do accidentally, demand my money back and tell them why.
12. Start playing chess.
13. Tell telemarketers I don't speak English.

Books/Websites to read:
Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving, by Betty Dodson
A Language Older Than Words, by Derrick Jensen
guerillagirls.com
guerillanews.com
buzzflash.com
commondreams.org
americaheldhostile.com
moxiemag.com
bamboogirl.com
alicemagazine.com
zmag.org
aviva.org
grrrlzines.net
dgarts.com
bookhousecafe.com
eveseye.com
bloodsisters.org
thekeeper.com
adiosbarbie.com
thelunapress.com
coopamerica.org
responsibleshopper.org
diysearch.com
worldwidewamm.org

Books to Buy:
Cunt. Obviously.
A New View of a Woman's Body: A Fully Illustrated Guide, by the FFWHC

Esse est Percepi

2007-05-01T21:11:00.000-05:00

In this paper I first intend to give Philonous/Berkeley’s perceptual relativity argument with regard to the mind-dependence of matter, and then present Hylas’ argument involving the veil of perception, that is, the concept that mind-independent objects cause mind-dependent ideas and these ideas resemble the objects in some way. Next I will put forward Philonous’ response to this, in particular the principle ‘nothing is like an idea except an idea.’ Finally, after describing how Locke would respond to this series of arguments and counter-arguments, including a summary of his representative theory of perception, I will explain which view I find the most appealing and which I find the easiest to defend.

Philonous presents the definitions of sensible things and sensible qualities nearly in the same breath. Sensible qualities, he says, are those qualities which are immediately perceived by the senses and sensible things are either just sensible qualities or a combination thereof.[1] At first, Hylas wants to say that immediately perceived qualities are sensible things but it was soon pointed out to him that no regular object is a sensible quality by this definition. For example, when looking at a ball on the table, we would not think that it was a spherical object sitting on a plane without intervening interpretation. We would instead see just a sea of color of various shades and tints, with no way to evaluate the patterns in the colors. The word immediately here is used in contrast to mediately. Something is immediately perceived if it is directly perceived - if no intervening reason or evaluation gets in the way. Philonous uses the example of letters in a book; the shapes of the letters are immediately perceived, but their meaning is mediately perceived.[2]

Philonous uses an argument from perceptual relativity to support the mind-dependence of matter. Mind-independent objects can exist without having to be perceived but mind-dependent objects must be perceived to exist. Berkeley describes a situation in which a person has one hand colder than the other and a water bath with a temperature between those of the hands.^{^[3]} The person sticks each of their hands into the water, and to the colder hand the water seems hot, but to the hotter hand the water seems cold. The water has not changed, however; and because the water seems different to each of the hands, but has not changed, the water must be mind-dependent. The principle he is attempting to prove with this argument is that sensible things exist in our minds and only in our minds. You could argue that it is only the perceived qualities of the water that have changed, but since all experience of objects is mediated through perception, starting along this line of argument will not get you anywhere significant if you are going to play by the rules of an empiricist.

Here Philonous stands with the conclusion that matter is mind-dependent, but Hylas counters that only the ideas of matter are in our minds, and that these mind-dependent ideas are caused by mind-independent matter. For example, in the situation presented by Philonous above, the water itself would have temperature, but the mind would have the ideas of hot and cold. (This specific use of the word ‘temperature’ is perhaps a bit stronger than Hylas would have it, but I don’t think it is necessarily a stretch in the wrong direction.) Our perceptions are relative and vary because they are mind-dependent, but the objects that cause them are not – although the perception of the temperature of the water may shift, you would agree there is still water because the perceptions resemble the object closely enough.

Philonous thinks this resemblance business is a little on the liberal side. Even by Hylas’ admittance, ideas are malleable and impermanent, while objects are autonomous and permanent.[4] How can these two fundamentally different sets of attributes apply to things that are supposed to resemble each other? As mentioned above as a mere aside, perception mediates all experience, so even if the two opposing types of things managed somehow to resemble each other, we would never be able to know about it because we can only get to know the objects through the ideas.

As if this were not enough, Philonous goes on to present Berkeley’s principle that nothing is (or can be) like an idea except an idea.[5] Because nothing can be perceived without invoking ideas, it would seem that whatever invokes the ideas is not an idea, and furthermore, is nothing like an idea. Although there may be more to his argument than this, I couldn’t find it and I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with what I feel to be a rather bold statement about the nature of ideas.

Locke uses the terms ‘quality’ and ‘idea’ slightly differently than Berkeley does. For Locke, qualities are in objects and ideas are in minds. There are two kinds of qualities: primary and secondary. Primary qualities are inherent to objects; they cannot be separated; one example is extension. Secondary qualities are powers of the primary qualities to provoke various sensations in the perceiver; examples are color, smell, and taste.[6]

Locke has a representative theory of perception wherein all (simple) ideas are caused by qualities and some of these ideas resemble the qualities, namely the ideas we have of primary qualities.[7] The earlier relation of temperature versus hot/cold as applied to the perceptual relativity example is an accurate summation of Locke’s views as well. This theory is similar to Hylas’ objection to Philonous’ perceptual relativity argument. Locke’s just goes a little further and specifies the circumstances in which ideas resemble and do not resemble objects.

I don’t think Locke would accept Philonous’ statement that nothing is like an idea but an idea. Locke holds that we cannot invent simple ideas ourselves, the only place to get those is through perception and those simple ideas are a fair representation of the actual objects. Locke also believes in the veil of perception, but I think the key here that makes his argument a stronger reply to Philonous than Hylas’ is in his attribution of ‘powers’ to the objects. Instead of saying that some - since no rhyme or reason is given here the overall effect is that they are random – ideas resemble the object and some do not, Locke gives a system by which to analyze our perceptions: primary versus secondary qualities.

Even though Locke’s response would be better than Hylas’ was, I don’t think Berkeley would accept this reply as satisfactory. Locke does provide a better account of why some ideas would resemble the object and some wouldn’t, but Berkeley still wouldn’t think that ideas and objects were closely enough related that they could resemble each other at all. This strikes me as being another presentation of the mind/body problem. Ideas and objects are fundamentally different, so how can they interact? Berkeley solves the problem by saying that objects/bodies don’t exist.

Despite their disagreements I think you could combine Locke’s and Berkeley’s views without being disloyal to either of them through the addition of God – and actually the combination ends up being rather similar to Malebranche’s view of occasionalism. Everything is a mind or is in a mind (an idea), but the ‘objects’ exist in God’s mind, with the veil of perception then being not between objects and minds but between God’s mind and the minds of everyone else. However, even if you liked Locke and Berkeley so much that you wanted to combine their views on perception, Occam’s razor should get in the way.

I feel, like I think many people today do, that Hylas’ substance dualism (the existence of two essentially different types of things, minds and matter) is far more acceptable to me instinctively. It may not be the most reasonable way to feel, but there is still a little bit of a stigma for me with the effect of ideas seeming sometimes (at least somewhat) to be imaginary and that if everything was to be a mind or an idea, then it would be imaginary.

On the other hand, I can talk myself into accepting Berkeley’s view, at least intellectually. Being a solid supporter of finding (and hopefully accepting) the simplest explanation, the fact that Berkeley can do away with the mind/body problem is very satisfying. One objection I had been turning over in my mind was that what if, sometime in the future, we were to encounter sentient beings who had experiences (and scientifically persuasive proof) of the existence of extra things - phenomena, dimensions, whatever – of which we had no experience. These things would have existed before we were aware of them; how then could they exist although we had no experience of them? Obviously you would have to expand your definition of a ‘mind’ as time went on and as experience warranted to make your views as accurate as possible. Because I find Berkeley’s view to be the most logically appealing, that makes it the most defensible position for me as well.

[1] Dialogues p 416

[2] ibid. p 416b

[3] PHK p 475b

[4] ibid. p 432b

[5] ibid. p 432b-433a

[6] ECHU p 286b

[7] ibid. p 287

Time lies, a dead mayfly on the windowsill

2007-03-17T12:12:00.000-05:00

It should be very possible to get all philosophical about spring break, especially when one is at work and extremely bored. In essence, I'm getting paid to go off and write this philosophical treatise (Hey, it's St Patrick's Day, my illusions can party a little). Would that this made me a professional philosopher. And so I look around, searching for inspiration. Various parents with reluctant students in tow mill around aimlessly, except for the determined few that walk forcefully down the center aisle. At least somebody knows where they're going. Am I just jealous? Or am I simply angry that this is looking more like a journal entry than a blog post? Fresh start.

I feel as if I am in a state of constant self-betrayal. I loathe boredom, and yet I subject myself to it week after week for a few measly dollars. I soothe myself with promises that it isn't forever and I do need the money. The grey matter oozing out my ears pays no heed to the murmurings, though. What can I do, oh what can I do, oh what can I do, oh what can I do ... chantingchantingchanting, never stopping, never caring, slowly dying, without knowing. But I know everyone feels this, and for the uneducated young there are not many options more attractive than this. The pay is decent for what the work requires, and not stressful. Lovely. This has been an excellent fresh start. But who am I to question the leadings of the Muses?

The post runs short as the whine flows freely.

I will leave this as a testament to the petty trials of the not-yet-full-time philosopher.

Beyond Civilization

2007-01-16T22:45:00.000-06:00

This book is more of a how-to than any of Quinn’s books I’ve read thus far, but even so, it’s more of a show-and-tell than a how-to. He builds on the foundation laid in the reader by the Ishmael trilogy (although the trilogy is certainly no necessary to understand this book) by pointing out extant tribal situation in the midst of Taker culture. Circuses, gypsies, etc. Giving an example from his own life, Quinn describes a newspaper in the production of which he was involved and which was tribal in organization.

I’m not sure if I am up to the task of defining a tribe without referring constantly to Quinn quotes. I’m going to describe what I have recognized as different sorts of tribal organizations. Without expending too much creativity, I’m going to call them working tribes, living tribes, and living+working tribes. One can imagine a Venn diagram of tribal organization.

Working tribes work together (predictably). The impetus for their initial organization can be a common interest, for instance information conveyance in Quinn’s newspaper. A possible problem that I could think of for this is the unfair division of proceeds in relation to input of effort.

Living tribes live together (whee). Their impetus is perhaps a desire to live in the same fashion, or familial relation. There is a sharing of resources (property, income, and the like) for overall livelihood of the group. Communal living (not, necessarily, an isolated ‘commune’) is one term for this. A problem I can see with a living tribe is unfair contribution leading either the hierarchy or unrest.

These two descriptions bring forth a question in my mind…can one be separate from Taker culture by being a member of only one of these two organizational types? I can imagine being in a working tribe and using that as your sole source of income…but here I am stuck. If you are getting all your sustenance from a tribe, are you outside Taker culture? And is it even possible?

I am reminded of a tale of a Mexican fisherman. This fisherman was just coming in from a morning in his boat when an American corporate businessman on vacation approached him.

“Sir,” he said, “I can see that your boat is not yet full. What are you going to do for the rest of the day?”

The fisherman looked up at him and grinned. “I will go home now, have lunch and siesta with my wife, and then later I will play with my children, and in the evening I will play my guitar and talk with my friends.”

“Well, that does sound nice, but why aren’t you going to go catch some more fish? At the rate you seem to be going, you could have a profitable business in no time.”

The fisherman stood and began to tie up his boat. “Why should I catch more fish, when I and my family can live on what I have just caught?”

The businessman smiled affectedly, relishing this chance to teach the fisherman a thing or two about making a living. “If you spent more of your time catching fish, soon you could buy a second boat. With the profits from that, you could buy more and more boats. Why, in 10 or 20 years I imagine you could sell that business to someone for quite a pretty penny!”

“What would I do then?” asked the fisherman.

“Well, in the morning you could go out and fish a little, if you would like, and then go home to spend time with your wife and your friends. Perhaps play a little guitar in the evenings”

If this wise fisherman can do it, why can’t I?

Obviously, living where I do, I can no more make my living fishing than I can go scuba diving. But say I were to do things that made money just enough so I could do the things I like?

But on the other hand, if the food I eat is locked up, am I really free of Taker culture?

I digress. On to the third tribal type: the living+working tribe. As a combination of the two mentioned before, in this type the same people you work with are the people in your community (meaning this in the communal sense of the word, of course). The most obvious example of this is the ethnic tribe. When puzzling over this type of tribe, I was reminded of the community in Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing (another fantastic book). It has been a while since I read this, and I may not be getting the specifics right, but here are some general characteristics of this community:

They are responsible about their use and reuse of their resources. This includes trying to heal the damage already inflicted on the environment.

No one must work to survive. A bare sustenance is provided for everyone in the community.

The work that must be done (from childcare to medical care to music to…) is done by the people interested in doing it, and all contributions to the community are rewarded (though I hesitate to use that word). For example, a mother can stay at home to care for her children, but she is granted just as much credit as her partner who works outside the home.

There is no wealth hierarchy.

There is no ownership of the 4 sacred things (earth, air, fire, water).

There is coexistence of different lifestyles, races, cultures, religions, etc.

They employ hunting, foraging, and agriculture.

I realize that this community is not perfect, nor is it invulnerable. But I find it awfully attractive.

Daniel Quinn

2007-01-13T16:19:00.000-06:00

I have, in the past few weeks, read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, The Story of B, and My Ishmael. Now, I know that there are many people who have read these, and many who have felt a fire kindle within them: a desire to save the world, if you will. And many have gone so far as to actually do something, however slight toward this goal that is not noble or morally right, just absolutely necessary for the continued survival of this species.

I'm not sure that the continued survival of this species is such a good idea. Quite frankly, I'm tempted to hope that we don't develop the capability of planetary colonization before our current path drives us to extinction.

The problem is, when I use these words, we, us, I'm just talking about the descendents of the Taker culture. There are still a few Leaver peoples left on this planet, and they don't deserve the destruction that will befall our planet.

That's another thing. Do you think it could be possible for our culture to die out, but the planet still to recover? Because I realized, as I typed the above paragraph, that the Leaver peoples will not necessarily die our as the rest of us do, unless we take the planet along with us, which is very possible.

But I hope, not inevitable.

But what do I do? Instinctually, my first thought is to grab a knife, a blanket, and a water bottle and head out. Fuck Taker Culture! But then there is of course the issue that I could never survive out there on my own for long. Okay, so I take some survival courses. I become the best damn survivalist ever. And I leave. And survive. And have a great life out in the middle of the Law of Life.

But what happens to everyone else? Do I have an obligation to save everyone else too? Because I could do it, man. I could leave and go and be Jane Goodall or whatever. But is that the point of Daniel Quinn's works?

I actually do think that it could be a point. He doesn't want us to give up technology, doesn't want us to 'go back' to anything. Part of what he wants is for us to go make lives for ourselves that are worth living.

I think I'll end it here for right now: You have to save yourself before you can save the world.

Strawson, Freedom, and Resentment

2007-01-13T16:17:00.000-06:00

First and foremost, Peter Strawson wishes to point out that he does not know, and does not particularly care, exactly what the “thesis of determinism” is. He is only concerned with the fact that such a thesis does exist and that it involves actions being more or less determined in some sense or another. He also is not exceedingly concerned (for his own conclusion at any rate) about the truth or falsity of determinism. He then goes on to describe the viewpoints and disagreements of the “optimists and pessimists” of determinism, to which I will refer, more directly, as compatible determinists and incompatible libertarians. At the end of the article, Strawson concludes with a further distillation of the two viewpoints as they relate to his own personal thesis. I will present the two stances in due time, but will first go on to explain Strawson’s description of resentment, gratitude, indifference, offence, and other “reactive attitudes”.

There are many variations of ways to feel about another person, Strawson says. They are varied by our relationship to the person, the circumstances in which we interact, and not least by how and why they act toward us, or at least how and why we perceive they act toward us. Specifically, how we feel toward someone may vary quite a bit due directly to how we perceive their intentions.

If someone cuts you off on the interstate, how angry you feel about it will depend to some degree on what you know or think you know about the situation. Perhaps they have kids in the car and were distracted and didn’t see me, you might suppose, and then be persuaded to consider them in a somewhat kinder light. However, if you are quite sure that this wasn’t the case, you might think, some jerks have no regard for other people and think they can get away with anything. If this is how you perceive the situation, you might fume and flash gestures at them instead of just brushing it off.

Likewise, your feelings can be affected by how much choice you think the individual had in his actions. Being mentally unstable, under extreme duress or emotionally immature, as examples, may very well affect how you treat a person, perhaps differently than if someone else not under those condition(s) acted in the same way toward you.

So then, Strawson thinks that two of the greatest influences of variety in our treatment of people are their perceived intentions and their ability to choose their actions. But if determinism (whatever that means) is true, wouldn’t that limit our justification for varying our treatment of people? After all, when we think a person is limited in their choice of action in some way or another, we tend to give them a little leeway when meting out our resentment.

Regardless of the truth or falsity of determinism, Strawson says, the average person would not change their feelings about moral responsibility. When using “just punishment” (implying moral responsibility) as a means for coercing people to behave in socially desirable ways, it would negate the usefulness of that particular method if moral responsibility were wholly abandoned. Also, when teaching children to behave in socially desirable ways, it would do no one any good in the long term to dismiss their disagreeable actions as results of determinism.

Going back to Strawson’s optimists and pessimists, his characterization of a compatible determinist’s (hereafter shortened to ‘determinist’) view is someone who feels that the facts – so far as we have them – do not show determinism to be false nor do they disprove the validity of moral responsibility and punishment. These things are effective in producing, as before stated, socially desirable actions and it is only because they are effective that we have punishments at all. Strawson’s incompatible libertarian (shortened to libertarian) is someone who thinks that if determinism is true, then moral responsibility and consequential punishment have no place in any society. A libertarian will retort immediately to a determinist that punishment implies guilt which implies moral responsibility which implies freedom which implies the falsity of determinism! The determinist counters that that chain of implication only holds for a sort of “negative freedom:” freedom from moral responsibility in cases of coercion, incapacity, insanity, or a sort duress causing the kind of action that could reasonably be expected from anyone. The libertarian will say that this sort of freedom exists, but that’s not the only sort about which she was talking.

Finally Strawson admits that he falls more into the compatible determinist camp, but only if the viewpoint, such as he has presented it, is “radically modified.” Mostly, this modification has to do with how he views the purpose of moral responsibility and subsequent punishment, that is to remember that they are functions of our morality and not the “calculated” causes of it.

David Wiggins disagrees that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant when discussing the “practices” of responsibility, resentment, punishment, etc. We need to determine the truth or falsity of the thesis of determinism before we move on to discussing the finer points of moral responsibility: Strawson’s resentment and other “reactive attitudes.” Refusing to make an assumption about the truth-value of determinism does not exempt one from the consequences of its truth-value. He also thinks that the conclusion drawn by Strawson from his explanation of compatible determinism and incompatible libertarianism is a fallacy. He feels the language and the usage of language doesn’t need to be explained in ways that differ at least a noticeable bit from the norm, as he thinks Strawson seems to think it does. He might even go so far as to say that the purpose of language is to use it properly and in the way one means, not to draw faulty conclusions from convoluted arguments.

Strawson might respond that, as Wiggins points out, the libertarian would agree with the better part of Strawson’s arguments, but not with the conclusion. Because it is mainly the conclusion that Wiggins protests, Strawson may say that’s only because Wiggins doesn’t agree with it. After all, Wiggins doesn’t offer much of an argument, he just writes off Strawson’s conclusion as unsound after saying that it does matter whether or not determinism is true. But if in fact this is not the case, and Wiggins is not being quite so petty as all that, perhaps the main thing Strawson would say is to reiterate that the truth-value of determinism is not a building block for the rest of one’s arguments about free will and moral responsibility.

A part of Strawson’s argument that is appealing to me is that whether or not the philosophers ever find determinism to be definitively true or false may not change how the average commoner views moral responsibility, guilt, punishment, and the like. Of course the average philosopher probably doesn’t spend most of her time wondering how the average commoner would feel about her viewpoint, so perhaps it is irrelevant that I like this particular point of Strawson’s.

But, like Wiggins, I do rather wonder about how Strawson arrived at his particular conclusion from his discussion of optimists and pessimists and attitudes. If what Wiggins says is true, that it is a non sequitur, and so it would seem, if Wiggins says he agrees with nearly everything in the argument but the conclusion. Of course, it is the ‘nearly’ part that might make a crucial difference for Strawson’s credibility here. It does seem a little distressing to me that the conclusion is a statement that moral responsibility comes from our morality, not that we use moral responsibility to further the livelihood of our morality.

Either way, I do agree that the attitudes of the ordinary commoner would remain fairly unaffected by the truth or falsity of determinism, but I don’t agree with Strawson’s way of going about ‘proving’ this. Actually, I don’t really think that sort of statement needs philosophical proof at all. It’s really more of a psychological question in my opinion.

Jim1 and Jim2

2006-10-16T13:01:00.000-05:00

An unfortunate human named Jim was the victim of an amazing mechanically complex farm equipment accident in July, which severed his body so that each half of his body was left with exactly half of all organs. Each half was thrown clear of the machine and so far apart that the different rescue parties did not realize that the other half existed and so, each half was fitted with state-of-the-art prostheses in such a way that two functional bodies lived. Each survivor professes to be Jim and has the same memories, strengths, goals, and convictions.

Derek Parfit is called in to evaluate the situation. Parfit in general does not believe in the all-or-nothing mentality when referring to personal identity, so he is not concerned with saying whether or not these two beings are each the same person as Jim. He chooses to employ two descriptive terms – psychological continuity and psychological connectedness – when discussing the status of the beings.

Psychological connectedness means there is some inheritance of memories or attitudes or personality from the former being to the later one. Psychological continuity has a weaker implication than psychological connectedness and simply entails an overlapping chain of instances of psychological connectedness. For instance – if one was using only memory as a criterion, which is not the case for Parfit but will be used here for the sake of example - if a little girl gets her doll eaten by a dog and remembers the incident years later on her 25th birthday and then when she is 75 remembers her 25th birthday but not the dog incident, it could be said that the crone is connected to the young woman but only continuous with the girl.

In the case of Jim, Parfit would say that Jim is psychologically connected to both beings, that Jim has survived in both beings, but not that the beings are the same people as Jim. Each of the survivors is a ‘later self’ of Jim. Therefore, they could each refer to Jim as an ‘earlier self’ while not needing to regard themselves as the same person, or they could even say that they are ‘more or less’ the same person as Jim without needing to be ‘more or less’ the same as each other.

However, ‘Jim1 and Jim2’ are not completely assuaged by this evaluation so they ask for another perspective. A Lockian analyst is brought in to help. She explains Locke’s perspective on personal identity. Locke draws a semantic difference between the words ‘man’ and ‘person’ that is roughly equal to the difference between the concepts ‘ physical body’ and ‘mental consciousness.’ Furthermore, with regard to personal identity what matters for Locke is simply continuity of consciousness, which can be defined as continuity of memories, personality, beliefs, and (/or) goals. Because both of the survivors are consciously continuous with Jim, the analyst concludes that they are both the same person as Jim, but not the same man as Jim. (One thing that might make Locke’s assessment easier to make is if some testimony by the former Jim’s acquaintances was given, saying that when interacting separately with the two survivors, they are both extremely convincing Jims. This sort of independent verification seems important to Locke.)

This author finds Parfit’s arguments more compelling in this situation. Perhaps this is because it seems to make more sense intuitively to say that each survivor is very definitely related strongly to Jim but not feel compelled to have to identify the survivors as either ‘the same person’ as Jim or not, since it would be illogical to say that one was the same person as Jim and the other not since they are, for all intents and purposes, related to Jim in exactly the same way; nor is it intuitively comfortable to refer to them both as the same person as Jim, since they are not the same person as each other.

Although one weakness of Parfit’s evaluation could be that one doesn’t have an answer for the question ‘Is this man/person/survivor Jim?’ this author finds it a strength for the same reason she rejects the binary zero-sum attitude of Locke, namely because the idea is overwhelmingly appealing to her intuition. Parfit himself thinks this completely unnecessary, but other people might want a definitive answer. Also, if one thinks numerical identity is intrinsically locked up in the question of personal identity, Parfit is not going to satisfy.

Later that year, in September, Jim1 and Jim2 are working on another farm and are both involved in an accident in which all the prosthetics are severed from their bodies and thrown clear. The two halves are then fused together to result in one surviving body, which claims to be Jim and has the same memories, strengths, goals, and convictions.

Again Parfit says that this being is a ‘later self’ of Jim. But while this survivor is psychologically connected to Jim1 and Jim2, he is merely psychologically continuous with Jim.

The Lockian analyst is a bit perplexed by the situation, because in July she said there were two persons who were both the same person as Jim; the survivors have since been having different experiences and are no longer consciously continuous with each other, therefore the latest survivor cannot still be Jim, because the line of continuity has been broken or at least re-fused at the end with a split in the middle.

This author cannot see a way in which the Lockian analyst could reply in this situation that the final survivor is still Jim. But then who is he? And what happened to the two survivors that were Jim? When presented with the two situations together as a whole there might be a way for the analyst to explain it in a way that fits with Locke, but when confronted with the situations separately there seems to be a major problem or at least an incongruity.

Again, Parfit seems better able to handle this situation in a consistent way. However, perhaps this is because his is a weak, rather wishy-washy view. Instead of picking one or the other, he picks neither. Is this getting around the issue, or just being smart enough to rise above the points that don’t matter?

This author thinks that Parfit is accurate in both of his assessments and that by choosing to regard two points of contention – one, that someone either must be the same person as they were before or they must not and two, that regardless of the fact of the matter where one is concerned, we have to decide on one before we can make any statements about personal identity – as irrelevant, he makes this situation more easy and more consistent to evaluate than one is able to do under the tenets held by Locke.

Life Goals

2006-08-31T17:07:00.000-05:00

1. Live in a box.
2. Dress in period clothing for one (consecutive) year.
3. Learn to dance.
4. Publish something and get paid for it.
5. Make streudel.
6. Use coriander seed while cooking.
7. Make good brownies.
8. Read Ovid, Catullus, and Martial in the original Latin.
9. Study sacred geometry.
10. Get henna done.
11. Go swimming skyclad.
12. Have a library.
13. Have and herb garden.
14. Have a conversation with someone who doesn't speak English.
15. Visit all the European countries.
16. Have sex under a full moon.
17. Own a cat.
18. Design a house and gardens.
19. Learn to drive stick.
20. Wear full-body leather.
21. Teach someone an important life skill.
22. Lay a brick/stone walk.
23. Go to a Star Trek convention.
24. Hear the northern lights.
25. See a lunar eclipse.
26. See a solar eclipse.
27. Hold something 2000+ years old.
28. Get my portrait done by a streetworker in Europe.
29. Road trip across the US.
30. Scuplt something either out of clay or stone.
31. Learn how to throw knives.
32. Get a(nother) tattoo.
33. Go scuba diving.
34. Have absinthe.
35. Patent something.
36. Write a poem in another language.
37. Visit an archaeological sit of an ancient city.
38. Take an account of a great explorer and travel it.
39. Make candles.
40. Learn to surf.
41. Learn to ski.
42. Have sex in a boat.

Responsible Time Travel: Study Causation Before You Build That Time Machine!

2006-04-21T10:16:00.000-05:00

Time travel has captured the imaginations of countless persons throughout history, although many or most may regard it as complete science fiction rather than even having a marginal possibility of realization. This is not a discussion of the physical mechanics of time travel, but of the identity and nature of time from a philosophical standpoint and the causal ramifications thought inherent to any sort travel through time.

First of all, before even broaching the subject of whether or not it is theoretically feasible to travel through time, one must consider if it is even logically possible. There are many ways of looking at time’s identity, but two I consider central to this discussion are time as an unreality and time as a fourth dimension.

J. E. McTaggart discusses time in two ways, called the “A series” and the “B series.”[i] The A series uses the stages ‘past,’ ‘present,’ and ‘future’ to refer to temporal events and moments. What is now present was once future and will be past. In this series events are always changing. They move from one stage to another in a certain necessary order (that is, order determined solely by definition) and cannot be in more than one stage at any single moment. The B series describes temporal order. If K occurred before L and after J, J is earlier than K and K is earlier than L. This order will never change, no matter what moment of reference is used. The moments J, K, and L could be in one’s past, future, or present, but the order is, was, and will remain unaffected.

McTaggart thinks that the A series is essential to time. Time cannot exist without the existence of the A series and we cannot claim that events exist without using the A series to describe them.[ii] The B series is not necessary in the same way. When explaining the dispensable nature of the B series, McTaggart introduces the “C series.”[iii] The C series is like the B series without the temporal aspect, i.e. a pure sequence. If the order of the series is P, Q, R, S it will also be S, R, Q, P, but not Q, R, P, S or any other combination.

Having described these three series, McTaggart reminds his reader that he does not think time is real. This is because he claims the A series does not exist and without it time does not exist. The A series is unreal because it is self-defining and thus given to circular reasoning. One cannot define or even describe the terms ‘past,’ ‘present,’ and ‘future’ without referring to verb tenses that are themselves characterized by those three terms. He then explains that the B series does not exist either, but that the C series does. Therefore, in actuality, events have sequence but not a temporal order or a description by the three terms of the A series.[iv]

In contrast, David Lewis likens time to a railway, and more specifically a “mountain railway” when described in conjunction with time travel.[v] This sort of time is a fourth dimension, and time travel is not a logical impossibility because times other than the present do exist in actuality. This is not to say that travel is possible – yet – but that there are at least destinations. One could move temporally in a linear way because the temporal moments commonly referred to as the past and future do exist, and not just in the memory or imagination. To further describe this vision of time, it is useful to go into its causal properties, which will be discussed later on.

Also, Lewis introduces the distinctions of “personal time” and “external time” which are almost necessary when considering the paradoxes of time travel.[vi] Personal time is the time traveler’s own time, which can be thought of as the elapsed time on her own wristwatch, which may differ from the external time, along which she is traveling. If the traveler takes ten minutes of her personal time to go linearly in external time, say 50 years, for her only ten minutes have passed but the world is in a different time by a measure of 50 years.

Lewis’ vision of time allows for time travel while McTaggart’s does not. This is most simply explained by noticing that for McTaggart there is nowhere to go, because time does not exist. McTaggart’s main argument is that the A series is necessary for time and that the A series does not exist, therefore time does not exist. I do not think that this is necessarily so. The A series may be a useful construction for describing time in everyday conversation but it may not be requisite for time’s existence. The C series may be enough to fulfill that particular requirement. I do not have the ability to prove this conclusively at the moment, but if we are to further discuss time travel it is imperative that we take Lewis’ vision of the identity of time and carry on with its nature.

Of the nature of time I will also mention only two positions in the interest of simplicity and brevity. The Heraclitean position entails the constant fluctuation of time. According to this outlook, trying to move to a destination in the future would be impossible because the future truly does not yet exist. Travel to this sort of past is not possible because the traveler could not “gain causal access to it.”[vii] On the other hand, the Parmenidean view holds that time is eternal;[viii] the past and the future exist in the same way the present exists. It is in this sort of system that time travel is logically feasible, and this is the perspective we shall take.

This brings us to the problems and paradoxes involved in the causal effectualness of time travel. Can one really change the past? One common-sense argument is that no, one cannot, because the past has already occurred. But this is a Heraclitean view. Another argument is that time is accessible because it is eternal. However, this does not intrinsically imply that one can change the past, or the future for that matter. It is commonly held that the future has not yet happened, therefore one can easily ‘change’ or affect it. According to the Parmenidean view, this is not so. The future exists always, in the same way the past exists. The answer to the question above is yes, of course, because if one is going to change the past, one will have already changed it and will always have changed it.

But if the change has already existed, doesn’t that mean that there wasn’t ever anything from which to change it? This question can be addressed by thinking of time in branches.[ix] Consider the famous grandfather paradox: can Wil go back in time and kill his own grandfather before his own father is conceived? When thinking of time in branches, this sort of scenario is certainly possible.

Imagine there exist two timelines, Alpha and Beta. In timeline Alpha, Wil exists; in Beta he does not. Alpha Wil goes back along line Alpha and kills his own grandfather. Beta branches off Alpha the moment before Wil’s grandfather’s death on line Beta. In this way, Wil’s grandfather does not die on line Alpha and so Wil can go back to kill him. However, after this moment Alpha Wil exists on line Beta. This is another pivotal point for us; there are two choices of perspective regarding temporal causal efficacy. Line Alpha may forever be lost to Alpha Wil; even if he goes forward along the line he will not find a time where a Beta Wil exists. The alternative is that he can indeed jump branches of time laterally as well as in the ‘normal’ linear sense.

To illustrate these two types of time travel I will refer to Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity. The primary or ‘normal’ type discussed in the novel is like Wil’s movement along line Alpha; that is, linearly along a single timeline without the ability to jump branches. Indeed, Asimov’s principal character Andrew Harlan does not even realize that the other branches are permanent just as the eternal timeline is permanent. His purpose – his vocation – is to change the timeline for the betterment of humanity. In some cases he can affect change with a simple movement of a book on a shelf, but sometimes he must integrate himself into that particular when for a duration of his own personal time. Harlan - and Harlan’s colleagues - believe that once the timeline has been changed, the ‘former’ one cannot be retrieved. It is not until the end of the novel that Harlan discovers a worker who deals not only with the line of time, but with its infinite branches.[x]

Wil’s story assumes that Wil’s presence in an earlier time has only the effect of his grandfather’s demise. Unfortunately causal theory has not been developed to the point where one can be certain that this would be the case. Even the smallest action could have ramifications of colossal proportions a few years down the line. In Asimov’s world, the relationships of cause and effect are much more firmly established than any causal system we presently possess. This issue ties ethics to time travel.

Ethically, one would suppose that a time traveler whose mission was to change a single event would prefer not to affect any other changes on the timeline, to result in as few branches as possible. A succinct statement of this responsible desire is expressed in the Temporal Prime Directive of Starfleet, a military organization from Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek series: “All Starfleet personnel are strictly forbidden from directly interfering with historical events and required to maintain the timeline and prevent history from being altered.”[xi]

This is a noble goal, but the prevailing state of causal theory is not at a level to make this aspiration attainable beyond a reasonable doubt. Current science has brought time travel out of the realm of pure science fiction and into that of scientific possibility. There is much yet to be discovered about the nature of time. Metaphysics and physics grow ever closer; the divide between science and spirituality is narrowing. What has been a philosophical subject – the identity and nature of time – will soon become a scientific topic. Time travel may become an actuality. Before this happens, I believe causation should be fervently studied to become as highly developed as possible, to the point of an empirical science.

Notes:
1. J. Ellis McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time.” Mind 17, no. 68 (Oct. 1908): 458-9. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423%28190810%292%3A17%3A68%3C457%3ATUOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y 2. Ibid., 463.
3. Ibid., 461-2.
4. Ibid., 467-9.
5. David Lewis, “The Paradoxes of Time Travel.” American Philosophical Quarterly 13, no. 2 (Apr. 1976): 147.
6. Ibid., 146-7.
7. William Grey, “Troubles with Time Travel.” Philosophy 74, no 287 (1999): 57.
8. Ibid., 56.
9. Lewis, “Paradoxes,” 152.
10. Isaac Asimov, The End of Eternity. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1955.
11. “Temporal Prime Directive,” Memory Alpha, http://memory-alpha.org/en/index.php?title=Temporal_Prime_Directive&oldid=303254.

Bibliography

Asimov, Isaac. The End of Eternity. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1955.

Grey, William. “Troubles with Time Travel.” Philosophy 74, no 287 (1999): 55-70.

Lewis, David. “The Paradoxes of Time Travel.” American Philosophical Quarterly 13, no. 2 (Apr. 1976): 145-152.

McTaggart, J. Ellis. “The Unreality of Time.” Mind 17, no. 68 (Oct. 1908): 457-474. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4423%28190810%292%3A17%3A68%3C457%3ATUOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

“Temporal Prime Directive,” Memory Alpha, http://memory-alpha.org/en/index.php?title=Temporal_Prime_Directive&oldid=303254.

Contentment

2006-04-04T00:09:00.000-05:00

contentment with godliness is great gain
my lips smirk in amusement
are they still teaching this fallacious argument?

I know godliness, I spent years…
fervent study, steeped in the scalding bath
of rigidly rigorous religion
and with this came, not a sense of peace
or the calming air of an anchor -
never that,
only a helpless flailing, the paradox
of necessary good works and unconditional grace
draining any measure of control
freedom from responsibility
which seems to be a relief for some
but never, somehow, for me
contributing, compounding, feeding
the underlying vague uneasiness
hidden and unnamed, never allowed to surface

oh yes, I know godliness

but contentment, contentment is fleeting
deliciously so
free, almost, from objective empirical study
I can no more ‘know’ contentment
than I can know how a vacuum tastes
or the tune of the Earth’s birthing cry
how can uncertainty be liberating
when conviction is not?

although I do not know contentment
I can recognize it
I have experienced it,
reveled in it joyously
it reaches up and catches me by surprise,
always,
and this is a tingle of pleasure in itself

can I describe them to you?
these moments, that exist and are tasted and then vanish, laughing?
somehow words do not capture the feeling –
being breathless and filled with pure, bright air all at once;
knowing, as you gaze at the stars,
some of their light is captured in your own eyes
but knowing also that your companion cannot see it
(unless you are very, very lucky);
when silence is enough, and more;
how the sun filtering through bare-limbed trees
is the most nourishing thing you’ve ever known;
simple affectionate words, whispered playfully –
mean so much more than any coldly scrutinizing praise,
lofty and verbose;
the feeling of newly-cut grass under your bare feet
and its smell, the very scent of life,
wafting up around you;
this is all I can say of contentment

contentment without the further requirement of godliness,
from what I can tell, is the greatest gain of all

Myslf, finally

2006-03-21T16:58:00.000-06:00

I am a sphere:
complete
a crystalline globe lit from within
with prismatic, undulating fire

glancing down at the pale skin of my arm,
I expect to see it rippling
with
the effervescence that threatens to utterly,
delightfully,
consume me

my eyes are shining brightly
I know this although I do not consult a mirror
I can feel their wide wonderment
a palpable sparkle

my lips curl with amusement
for no one is glancing my way
solemn necks holding upturned faces
sit stoically in careful rows before me
oh, you insensate wretches –
you do not know what you are missing!
can you not sense the electricity
- emotional, intellectual, spiritual –
that envelops me
in a vital, writhing cloud?

my fingers tingle restlessly
but this very impatience is pleasurable
reminding me that I have
passion and anticipation and hope and hunger

unlocking the cell in which my true self has been held
has inspired awe
awakened the smouldering embers that
lie
just under the surface of my breast,
flaring with the fervor of long ago

glaciers melt and flow into brisk rivers
that steam joyously to the roaring sea
natural and achingly right, this breathtaking reunion
I am myself

finally

Supernatural

2006-03-07T17:54:00.000-06:00

I think many, if not all, 'supernatural' occurances will eventually be able to be explained by empirical science.

At the moment, I do not partake in the Judeo-Christian idea of a personal God (as if you couldn't tell by the original sin post...). That is, the God portrayed in the Bible - the one who created everything in six days, sent his supernatural Godman of a Son to this earth, and condemns everyone who doesn't follow the human-constructed religious practices to eternal torment.

This is not to say that I reject all things 'supernatural.' Quite the opposite, in fact. Things described throughout history as angels and demons might - probably do - exist, but maybe without the moral ramifications.

Ghosts, for instance. I have heard 'ghost stories' from two separate people whose sound minds and rational judgement I trust a great deal.

Original Sin

2006-03-07T16:54:00.000-06:00

Shit happens because you are evil and you don't work hard enough.

This, I have come to understand, is an unspoken tenet of the specific denomination of Christianity (LCMS) with which I grew up. Let me tear it apart and build on it for you.

Why do bad things happen? The existence of evil is certainly a problem for theists. Does gratuitous evil (i.e. evil that does not further the greater good) exist or are all seemingly evil things part of a 'master plan'? If God is so wise and powerful, couldn't he have made the world exclusive of evil?

Well, the LCMS handles this by saying that originally there was no evil in the world - until the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was eaten by Eve and Adam, at which time evil entered the world. My question is...why would such a Tree needed to have been made at all? (and do remember that I am speaking with tongue firmly in cheek here, I do not necessarily believe/disbelieve in God or the literal truth of the Judeo-Christian bible - no claims made yet!) Such an omission would not have taken good away from the world, surely, only evil. Free will would still exist; free will does not depend on the ability to choose between good and evil, only the ability to choose. (I have heard Adam/Eve and the Garden of Eden compared to a toddler left in a room with a loaded gun. A bit harsh, perhaps, but something to think about nonetheless.)

One starts off from behind, paying for the sins of the father so to speak. The concept of original sin is rather tricky, really. No matter what one does one can never get away or work out of it.

One could be tempted to give up: what's the point of trying? That's where the grace of God comes in! This deity first gave man curiousity, then the temptation of knowledge - an animate, crafty one at that - and then when man succumbed, as He surely knew they would, He laid the burden of original sin on every subsequent life, which one can only be rid of by whole-heartedly buying into the grace thing. Even though this grace is 'a gift, freely given,' one is morally compelled to strive to do all the good works possible, and to feel guilt if one doesn't do all one can to better other people without concern for personal needs. Selfless God-ordained service is the theme here.

Which leads me to the absurdity of the personal God concept. Humans are so very narcissistic. A quote from Robert Heinlein's Time Enough For Love articulates my feelings here exactly: "The most preposterious notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history."

What is an alternative to all of this? Step away from original sin, from the Garden of Eden, from God, even, if you wish. A subject for another post, perhaps.

Sonnet

2006-02-28T15:51:00.000-06:00

Belief in the system of fate,
trusting in the product of chance,
lifting from yourself the great weight:
"You are culpable for Life's dance."
Cast your guilt off from your shoulders,
free your limbs from their heavy chains!
Stoke the fire where it smoulders -
forget the superstitious banes.
It's unknown on what cause depends;
trusting providence, that's the key.
For, of course, you can't see all ends
and whatever will be, will be.
Exhaustion ever is sweet pleasure's leech.
Why be a slave to things beyond your reach?

Reincarnation

2006-02-19T16:27:00.000-06:00

Matter and energy in this universe are conserved, according to current scientific law. Why shouldn't this apply to souls as well? So far science doesn't explain the presence of souls, but at the rate they're going that will probably change sometime in the not-so-distant future. I think the law of conservation applies to souls as well. Meaning reincarnation. Why shouldn't they be used again?

Self-Worth

2006-02-04T16:36:00.000-06:00

3. One should value oneself at least as much as one values other people.

This concept may sound like the traditional Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, however, it doesn't seem that way to me.

You cannot expect to be able to value other people if you don't even value yourself.

Souls

2006-02-04T16:21:00.000-06:00

2. Humans have souls that exist after the death of the physical body.

However, the precise definition of a 'soul' may be rather hard to come by. Here I use the word only to mean a non-physical spirit or sense of self. The general idea of a 'conscience' may actually be part of this soul, but then again, maybe not.

>>>This soul is the only common denominator between all humans of all times and all places.

I'm not yet sure if I think that the souls exist before their joining with the human body.

I do like some aspects of the Platonic view of two worlds with a mediating soul:

~There are two worlds, the real world and the shadow world. The real world is eternal and unchanging, and the Forms exist in this world. The Forms are absolute and eternal. Souls not joined with bodies are in this world also. The world in which humans exist is the shadow world. Here we can grasp the basic concepts of the Forms, but we cannot know them fully. The knowledge of the Forms come from our souls. Before joining with our bodies, they knew everything about the forms but forgot this knowledge when joined with a human body. Therefore everything we come to realize about the Forms is simply the memory of our souls returning to us. After the death of the body, the soul will either return to the real world (as it desires very much to do) or it may need to endure another round of human life, if it for some reason has not attained the privilege of returning the perfect eternal real world.

There are some rammifications on the issue of suicide with respect to Plato's view of the worlds and the soul, but I will discuss that in another post.

The Universe

2006-02-04T16:06:00.000-06:00

1. The universe came into existence through a creative force.

There are several ways in which this can be fleshed out.

>>>This creative force brought everything into existence, set the absolute laws of nature into play, then left the laws to run everything, and every apparent deviation from natural law is simply because of a lack of knowledge on our part.

>>>This creative force brought everything into existence, is - in effect - in everything, therefore the observable laws of nature can partly be understood as extensions of its rational and logical will, and there is no single deity to appeal to because the Creator is in everything. (this rather corresponds at least partly to transcendentalism)

>>>This creative force brought everything into existence, set up the general laws of nature and sometimes finds it prudent to deviate from them from time to time, at will. (this rather corresponds to the Christian Father-God)

I am rather inclined, at this point, to believe the second of these three extensions of the principal statement.

Purpose of credoergosum

2006-02-04T15:55:00.000-06:00

This blog is for philosophical musings. Of mine. I have several other personal blogs that deal with the goings-on of my everyday life and the types of things I will dicuss here have no place with those rather petty and frivolous entries. Also, the persons who read my other blogs may take offense at the sorts of ideas I will present here and I would hate to shun some interesting theories or realizations I come to because of a need for censorship.

Inaugural Post

2006-02-03T22:24:00.000-06:00

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

~Bertrand Russell