The main challenge of human society and politics is, in terms of game theory, the problem of defection. That is, how do you prevent free riders, thieves, bandits, and thugs? How do you ensure that those who are able contribute at least as much as they take, if not more? For surely, we do not begrudge the costs of supporting the unfit, those who are, by accident or by birth, incapable of carrying their weight. It is the mark of civilization that we find in the fossil record the presence of people who would not have lived without the care and support of others. To consign those who are unable through no fault of their own to destitution and death is to embrace barbarism.
Those who refuse to contribute by choice are another matter. Ayn Rand foolishly claimed that there can be no conflict of interest between rational actors, but if there is a good chance of escaping detection and of getting away with it, isn't defection a rational act? Isn't it perfectly rational for me to steal from you, if I think I can get away with it? Our disgust with cheaters is emotional, and in some circles, this disgust is barely present--if someone is clever enough to rob others blind and get away with it, there are people who will applaud his actions and even emulate them. I have no use for this sentiment, but the fact that some do demonstrates that our distaste for it is not entirely rational. It is a sentiment born of empathy, the basis for ethics.
In my recent ruminations on libertarianism, I have been struck by the fact that it is the new opiate of the intellectuals, a status formerly occupied by communism. So what is it, then, that communism and libertarianism--indeed, all the isms, including the religions, have in common that makes them attractive? What makes them all appear to be the ideal solution to all of society's problems?
The answer, I now believe, is that they ignore the hard problem of defection. A hard problem is not merely technically hard, to be solved by the application of current knowledge; it is theoretically hard, meaning that we don't even have the theoretical framework to address it. But the hard problem of defection is viewed by ideologies as a temporary and unnatural condition imposed by some social or political blight--call it X; once X is removed, through the mechanism or intervention of Y (the One True Way) the natural balance will be restored and the new utopia will result. X can be evil spirits, civilization, industry, marketing, atheism, secularism, capitalism, government, liberalism, conservatism, etc. Y can be any religion, communism, history, naturalism, spiritualism, environmentalism, libertarianism, central planning, anarchism, the market, etc.
Inherent in this view of the world is the idea of the noble savage, the marvelous creature that we would be if only we could conquer the worm that has turned us, the malevolent force that has corrupted us and defiled our true nature, But the truth is that we in the West live in a condition of unprecendented peace, prosperity, order, competence, and freedom. There was no golden age. The historical record has progress written all over it, and so far, so good. This is not to say that we have it all right, but we have it better than any of our ancestors. The fact is that we are it; we are what everyone, past and present, want to be. We have what they want and wanted. The average middle class westerner enjoys a standard of living, freedom, culture (if they so desire) and health that the kings of a century or more ago could only have prayed for.
The premise of the noble savage is nonsense, and the avoidance of the hard problem is nonsense on stilts. Implicit in the myth of the noble savage is the myth of Utopia, that magical world which we would achieve if only we defeated the unnatural circumstances which prevent us from reverting to our natural state. Ideologies sweep the hard problem under the carpet. Communists thought that if they got rid of capitalism, everyone would simply enthusiastically work for the common good. We all know how that worked out. Libertarians think that if they get rid of government restraints, everyone will suddenly be possessed of a sterling character. Do we really need to go down this road again? For once, can we not just take the lesson as a given and move on?
Ideology, and its bastard child partisanship, are of absolutely no use to addressing the hard problem. In fact, they are an impediment. Consider this conundrum: a government agency makes a mistake. The opposition party plays up this mistake to the press, blaming it upon the governing party. The press takes up the cause, and at length the governing party appoints an investigative committee. The committee performs its enquiry and makes recommendations, which almost invariably include a regulative body to ensure that such mistakes are not made in the future. The committee, and the new regulative body, are additional layers of bureaucracy. In Canada, the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal cost far more than the original scandal. The inquiry was demanded by the Conservatives, the same party who initiated the sponsorship program, and who spent most of the money. But when Gomery made his recommendations, the same party folded them into paper airplanes and tossed them out the window. And this was the party supposedly in favor of fiscal responsibility. But it could have gone the other way, with the positions of the parties reversed. Partisanship costs us a fortune.
There is no theoretical or ideological solution to the hard problem of defection. Religion specializes, not in spirituality, but in communitarian solidarity and conformity. I recently heard an interview on the CBC with a man who stated that people who go to churches do so not to seek spirituality, but to avoid it; those who go to church have far fewer spiritual experiences than those who don't. But you would think that community would solve the problem of defection. It doesn't. If it did, there were be no priestly pedophiles. Religious authority provides the ideal cover for the defector; if there is an interventionist God, he certainly would not allow such and egregious abuse of power in his name. But there is no such God, and the belief that he will intervene to prevent such offenses provides superb cover for those intending to commit them. The history of Christianity is a story of the abuse of power, and splinter groups formed to avoid such abuses only to be infected themselves. Islam is riddled with similar blights, but far worse. And because religions are mutually antagonistic, they disrupt attempts at cooperation across religious lines. Religion does not work.
The problem runs far deeper. The solution to it is something called Intangible Wealth--a happy coincidence of faith in government and judicial systems, police, and other people--a conviction that one's society is a meritocracy that will recognize and reward effort and excellence, and will not silence the truth, no matter how uncomfortable. This, in a nutshell, is the American Dream--though not necessarily the American reality. Freedom works. My argument with libertarianism is not with that; freedom is strength, knowledge is power, trade is peace. My argument with libertarianism is that it is too simplistic. Hard core Libertarians are anarchist loons, and it is worth remembering that anarchism is a primitive state of social organization to which, by comparison, feudalism is considered a significant advance. Capitalism exists through a steady partnership with government. Intangible Wealth is, in large part, a trust in the system of government. Doctrinaire Libertarianism is a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.
I find survivalists an endless source of mirth. These are people poised to bolt at the first sign of trouble, defectors in waiting. Yet there are perhaps ten thousand people in Canada who know how to survive and forage in the wilderness. That is extraordinary percentage for any population. Most survivalists will have their bones discovered in the mud fifty or a hundred years later. The proper response, in any time of crisis is to go to a densely populated area and say "Hi, I'm here to help. What can I do?" Fortunately, this is precisely what most people will do. Crises pull people together--the cowardly thoughtless sheeple who populate disaster movies and episodes of 24 are revealed for the lie they are by the thousands of feats of civilian heroism on 9/11. On that day it was the civilians who demonstrated their mettle, while the officials were notably absent. Civilization will not collapse--and there is no survival without it anyway. Civilization is precisely a system of solutions to the task of keeping large numbers of human beings alive. Isolation from society, for the vast majority of human beings, is death.
And therein lies the hope; most people are actually good. The problem with ideologies is not so much that they make good people bad, but that they can make bad people and evil acts appear to be good. They jam our moral compass. Fortunately, most people interpret them according to their own mores, but that still leaves room for the demagogues, who attempt to enforce one-size-fits-all solutions to extremely hard and complex problems.
It's never that simple.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
In Defense of Reason
Recently New Scientist had a series of articles talking about the limitations of reason. They run from the hackneyed (Rowan Williams talking about how reason doesn't a basis for morality) to neuroscience (consciousness lags behind actual decision making) to the cliched--reason doesn't explain aesthetics, doesn't account for "other ways of knowing", etc.
Consciously used reason is like riding a bicycle with the training wheels--it's what you do till you get the knack. But practice makes perfect, and the way you practice making proper judgements is to apply reason to your decisions. The denigration of reason is like expecting you to play a sport perfectly without ever having practiced. I'm sure that the first time that Tiger Woods swung a golf club, he missed the ball, or knocked it off to the side. Even a natural needs practice. We practice thinking by using reason, by analyzing the roots of our decisions, ferreting out the unexamined and erroneous factors, and replacing these with sound principles. By doing so, we eventually learn to do it "without thinking"--but a lot of thought goes into this end result.
The best analogy I can think of is from programming. When you begin writing a program, you first debug by eye, examining the logic manually to look for errors. The next step is compiling, where the compiler picks out syntax errors, which you must then correct. Yet even then, you run the program in debug mode; the code is festooned with symbols and error checking, which makes it slow, but which allows you to trace the logic and find the errors in your code. Only when it passes all these tests, and functions perfectly, do you compile a release build. The release build is optimized for speed and size, but it is incomprehensible, without symbols or the ability to trace the logic properly. It is unconscious code, no longer available for examination. Reason is the error checker. Once you've debugged your thinking, you can stop thinking about it--you reach your conclusions unconsciously.
While it may be true that reason alone will not lead to a complete system of ethics of aesthetics, it is also certain that the negligence of reason will result in a compacted version of both. It was only when the ideas of the enlightenment encountered the impulse of empathy that slavery and sexism were recognized as untenable and unethical. Or perhaps Rowan Williams would like to return to the primitive ethics of the ancient era, or those of the stone age, when murder was the leading cause of death. This was the product of ethics unleavended by reason. And reason may not be sufficient, in and of itself, for aesthetics, but it was responsible for the science of perspective which resulted in the artistic explosion of the renaissance, and for the ideas which have dominated every school of art from that point forward. I do not hear the anti-rationalists praising the skills of cave painters as the ultimate achievement of the arts. But if you want art without reason, that is what remains.
What I see in the denigration of reason is a culture of mediocrity, and ready-made excuse not to think or strive. I am reminded of the purile sentiments of the Star Wars movies: "Stretch forth with your feelings, use the force." Apparently heeding his own advice, George Lucas achieved new levels of mediocrity in big budget productions, assaulting his fans with wooden characters and dialogue desparately in need of some critical correction. Reason is critical, in both senses of the word--important, and corrosive when applied to nonsense.
But like knowledge, a little reason is a dangerous thing--the problem being not reason itself, but reason that stops and roots itself on what, in a search algorithm, we would refer to as "local minima"; this is a problem encountered when the search is too narrow. In pathing, the AI will get stuck in a dead end. Such a solution appears perfect only because too little critical thinking is applied to it.
I have been compiling a list of over 40 motivations for religious belief. Amongst these is the illusion of certainty, the conviction that you have a simple explanation for everything. I think this one lands in the top five, and it explains not only religions, but all the 'isms', those one-size-fits-all solutions to all the world's problems. None of these work. The influences upon the mind of a single human being include genetics, physical development, childhood and educational influences, culture, fashion, information or the lack thereof, physical states, emotional states, community membership and peer influence, self-interest, fear, and unexamined assumptions--and I'm sure I haven't caught everything here. When considering an entire society, you raise the level of complexity exponentially. No simple algorithm could encompass all that.
And still, even people who pride themselves on being rational fall for such simple-minded transcendalizations. Marxism used to be the opiate of the intellectuals; the flavour of the day is Libertarianism. There is nothing wrong with charity or freedom, just as there is nothing wrong with intuition, love, beauty, or even reason itself. The problem arises when you take any single principle and raise it to the level where you believe nothing else is required.
All have their place, just as reason has its place. But now we seem to be treated to a procession of people who would like to claim that reason isn't needed at all, or that it has done nothing for us. Of course, the argument is inherently contradictory, as you need reason to argue against reason. And invariably, when denigrating reason, there is something else that the critic would like to put in its place--usually faith, or some other, vaguely specified "way of knowing." But none of these ways of knowing actually produce knowledge, and all of them, if one examines them carefully, require the use of reason to train them and clarify them. Without reason, none of them would amount to much.
Consciously used reason is like riding a bicycle with the training wheels--it's what you do till you get the knack. But practice makes perfect, and the way you practice making proper judgements is to apply reason to your decisions. The denigration of reason is like expecting you to play a sport perfectly without ever having practiced. I'm sure that the first time that Tiger Woods swung a golf club, he missed the ball, or knocked it off to the side. Even a natural needs practice. We practice thinking by using reason, by analyzing the roots of our decisions, ferreting out the unexamined and erroneous factors, and replacing these with sound principles. By doing so, we eventually learn to do it "without thinking"--but a lot of thought goes into this end result.
The best analogy I can think of is from programming. When you begin writing a program, you first debug by eye, examining the logic manually to look for errors. The next step is compiling, where the compiler picks out syntax errors, which you must then correct. Yet even then, you run the program in debug mode; the code is festooned with symbols and error checking, which makes it slow, but which allows you to trace the logic and find the errors in your code. Only when it passes all these tests, and functions perfectly, do you compile a release build. The release build is optimized for speed and size, but it is incomprehensible, without symbols or the ability to trace the logic properly. It is unconscious code, no longer available for examination. Reason is the error checker. Once you've debugged your thinking, you can stop thinking about it--you reach your conclusions unconsciously.
While it may be true that reason alone will not lead to a complete system of ethics of aesthetics, it is also certain that the negligence of reason will result in a compacted version of both. It was only when the ideas of the enlightenment encountered the impulse of empathy that slavery and sexism were recognized as untenable and unethical. Or perhaps Rowan Williams would like to return to the primitive ethics of the ancient era, or those of the stone age, when murder was the leading cause of death. This was the product of ethics unleavended by reason. And reason may not be sufficient, in and of itself, for aesthetics, but it was responsible for the science of perspective which resulted in the artistic explosion of the renaissance, and for the ideas which have dominated every school of art from that point forward. I do not hear the anti-rationalists praising the skills of cave painters as the ultimate achievement of the arts. But if you want art without reason, that is what remains.
What I see in the denigration of reason is a culture of mediocrity, and ready-made excuse not to think or strive. I am reminded of the purile sentiments of the Star Wars movies: "Stretch forth with your feelings, use the force." Apparently heeding his own advice, George Lucas achieved new levels of mediocrity in big budget productions, assaulting his fans with wooden characters and dialogue desparately in need of some critical correction. Reason is critical, in both senses of the word--important, and corrosive when applied to nonsense.
But like knowledge, a little reason is a dangerous thing--the problem being not reason itself, but reason that stops and roots itself on what, in a search algorithm, we would refer to as "local minima"; this is a problem encountered when the search is too narrow. In pathing, the AI will get stuck in a dead end. Such a solution appears perfect only because too little critical thinking is applied to it.
I have been compiling a list of over 40 motivations for religious belief. Amongst these is the illusion of certainty, the conviction that you have a simple explanation for everything. I think this one lands in the top five, and it explains not only religions, but all the 'isms', those one-size-fits-all solutions to all the world's problems. None of these work. The influences upon the mind of a single human being include genetics, physical development, childhood and educational influences, culture, fashion, information or the lack thereof, physical states, emotional states, community membership and peer influence, self-interest, fear, and unexamined assumptions--and I'm sure I haven't caught everything here. When considering an entire society, you raise the level of complexity exponentially. No simple algorithm could encompass all that.
And still, even people who pride themselves on being rational fall for such simple-minded transcendalizations. Marxism used to be the opiate of the intellectuals; the flavour of the day is Libertarianism. There is nothing wrong with charity or freedom, just as there is nothing wrong with intuition, love, beauty, or even reason itself. The problem arises when you take any single principle and raise it to the level where you believe nothing else is required.
All have their place, just as reason has its place. But now we seem to be treated to a procession of people who would like to claim that reason isn't needed at all, or that it has done nothing for us. Of course, the argument is inherently contradictory, as you need reason to argue against reason. And invariably, when denigrating reason, there is something else that the critic would like to put in its place--usually faith, or some other, vaguely specified "way of knowing." But none of these ways of knowing actually produce knowledge, and all of them, if one examines them carefully, require the use of reason to train them and clarify them. Without reason, none of them would amount to much.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Flirting with Anarchy
Why does America have the highest rate of crime in the Western world, despite the highest incarceration rates, and extraordinary wealth? The explanation of poverty does not hold water--there are many poor countries where the poorest have little involvement in crime (this title goes to the middle class). Race and poverty do play a part, but not in the way that we expect. For underlying the argument that race and poverty are the causes of crime is the assumption, and indeed, the justification, of the idea that the downtrodden have the right to take justice into their own hands. It is believed that the disadvantaged have the right, even the responsibility, to 'fight the power.'
This is not simply an outgrowth of the ill-fated revolutionary movements of the sixties. The ideology of those movements followed a common stream of American thought laid down as early the second amendment, the right to bear arms. Those arms were aimed at foreign invaders, but they were also aimed--and more often, as time went on--at the gub'mint. For among the entrenched principles of individual action so esteemed in the American experiment, was the esteem of lone justice, the strong man with a gun and two fists who brought justice to his community, whether he was a lawman or not.
The lone bringer of justice enforced justice as he saw it, not the justice detailed by laws and governments. He did what needed to be done, whether it was legal or not. American settlers in the west moved into a vacuum; the people outraced the government. In Canada, settlers arrived to find the RCMP already in place. The RCMP has had a checkered career since: the brutality of the strikes during the 30's, thuggish behavior and intimidation during the 70's. But the establishment of official lawmen before settlement set a precedent and a mode of conduct. You didn't fight the power, you partook in it, through democratic and economic participation. Whatever followed, those early mounties did us proud, establishing global precedents of detective work and negotiation.
But in America, the love of lone justice has inspired a problem. If justice is left to the individual, if one person can be judge, jury, and executioner, then how do you ensure that that person is qualified? The answer is that you can't, and that means that all manner of imbeciles will arrogate to themselves the right to impose their own manner of justice by force. The result is not just the likes of Timothy McVeigh, but an endless procession of underclass losers who have decided that the world has done them wrong, and they are going to get their own back. It is no accident that so many American criminals are of the lowest tier of intelligence; these are the very people who are prone to assuming that their failures are the fault of the 'system', and taking violent action to address this perceived injustice. The old left's insistence that this is the case only makes this worse; it shifts the burden of responsibility onto external entities, rather than upon poor choices. This is sometimes true, as in the case of people who have invested for their retirement and find their saving wiped out by the rapacious manuverings of stock brokers. But for those who do nothing, save nothing, or waste their money on get-rich-quick schemes, the temptation to blame it all on anyone but themselves is very strong, and they have a readymade ideology that encourages them to do just that.
So the gap between the far right militias and the ghetto gangs is not so far distant. Both are united in the belief that if you want justice, you have to impose it yourself. This belief not only encourages violence, it undermines faith in the democratic process. This is the dark underbelly of libertarianism; the government cannot be trusted to do anything. You have to do it yourself. And yet, this includes violence, and the government monopoly on violence is an integral part of the rule of law, without which you have anarchy. Libertarians would, no doubt, flinch from the very phrase "state monopoly of violence", but that is the price of peace, order, and good government. That is the Canadian promise, but at the moment, it seems to be the American dream. Perhaps it is time for them to look north, and understand how we did it.
This is not simply an outgrowth of the ill-fated revolutionary movements of the sixties. The ideology of those movements followed a common stream of American thought laid down as early the second amendment, the right to bear arms. Those arms were aimed at foreign invaders, but they were also aimed--and more often, as time went on--at the gub'mint. For among the entrenched principles of individual action so esteemed in the American experiment, was the esteem of lone justice, the strong man with a gun and two fists who brought justice to his community, whether he was a lawman or not.
The lone bringer of justice enforced justice as he saw it, not the justice detailed by laws and governments. He did what needed to be done, whether it was legal or not. American settlers in the west moved into a vacuum; the people outraced the government. In Canada, settlers arrived to find the RCMP already in place. The RCMP has had a checkered career since: the brutality of the strikes during the 30's, thuggish behavior and intimidation during the 70's. But the establishment of official lawmen before settlement set a precedent and a mode of conduct. You didn't fight the power, you partook in it, through democratic and economic participation. Whatever followed, those early mounties did us proud, establishing global precedents of detective work and negotiation.
But in America, the love of lone justice has inspired a problem. If justice is left to the individual, if one person can be judge, jury, and executioner, then how do you ensure that that person is qualified? The answer is that you can't, and that means that all manner of imbeciles will arrogate to themselves the right to impose their own manner of justice by force. The result is not just the likes of Timothy McVeigh, but an endless procession of underclass losers who have decided that the world has done them wrong, and they are going to get their own back. It is no accident that so many American criminals are of the lowest tier of intelligence; these are the very people who are prone to assuming that their failures are the fault of the 'system', and taking violent action to address this perceived injustice. The old left's insistence that this is the case only makes this worse; it shifts the burden of responsibility onto external entities, rather than upon poor choices. This is sometimes true, as in the case of people who have invested for their retirement and find their saving wiped out by the rapacious manuverings of stock brokers. But for those who do nothing, save nothing, or waste their money on get-rich-quick schemes, the temptation to blame it all on anyone but themselves is very strong, and they have a readymade ideology that encourages them to do just that.
So the gap between the far right militias and the ghetto gangs is not so far distant. Both are united in the belief that if you want justice, you have to impose it yourself. This belief not only encourages violence, it undermines faith in the democratic process. This is the dark underbelly of libertarianism; the government cannot be trusted to do anything. You have to do it yourself. And yet, this includes violence, and the government monopoly on violence is an integral part of the rule of law, without which you have anarchy. Libertarians would, no doubt, flinch from the very phrase "state monopoly of violence", but that is the price of peace, order, and good government. That is the Canadian promise, but at the moment, it seems to be the American dream. Perhaps it is time for them to look north, and understand how we did it.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
It's Really A Something
In arguments against the physicality of mind, the subject of qualia often comes up. Qualia are direct experiences unmoderated by interpretation--the experience of seeing the color red, what it is to be a bat, and the like. Qualia are experiences which are ineffable (inexpressable and not communicable), intrinsic (self-contained and not dependent upon other knowledge), private (we cannot compare them), and immediately apprehensible (if you have the experience, you know it, and you know everything there is to know about it.)
Most of the arguments for qualia and against the physicality of the mind employ thought experiments which slip in the assumption that no physical change has been wrought in the body or brain by the experience, effectively assuming the consequent; we assume no physical basis for the experience, and presto, there is no physical basis! The inverted spectrum and zombie thought experiments are examples of this. Others hinge on the idea that qualia are inexpressable--but this says nothing about qualia, and much about the limitations of language. In any case, one would expect that a purely idealized form of expression would be ill suited to describing purely physical phenomena--these arguments actually support the physical basis of mind and experience, rather than weaken it. To be a bat, to see a color, or to have any direct experience is a physical event, involving deep underlying experiences involving sensory organs, muscular/skeletal sensations, and so on. Choreographers are still seeking a notation for dance which can express even the most basic repertoire of movements. Imagine trying to describe not only the movements in detail, but the detailed experience of performing them! And yet, there can be absolutely no doubt that these are physical actions and sensations.
In fact, qualia are the most physical aspect of consciousness. In discussions of the ineffable, mystical insights are usually regarded as the ultimate ineffable experiences. But how do these often come about? Through extreme conditions of the body--fasting, exertion to the point of collapse, drugs, the deliberate self infliction of pain, or repetitive or long held postures or activities. These experiences are commonly induced through direct or indirect manipulation of neurochemical states. Yet the claims of mysticism are that one has overcome the body, when in fact they have manipulated their bodies to achieve these states. Even the most spiritual of experiences is, at its very roots, physical.
Steven Pinker, in a recent article regarding The Stupidity of Dignity notes that Leon Kass, who loaded a council on bioethics with staunch Catholics, regarded any physical act, even eating, as undignified--Kass railed against the indignity of eating ice cream cones in public. Likewise, Kass exalts the imagined spiritual properties of an ovum over the physical good of living people. His sympathy with Catholicism is all too clear; Catholicism too values the mortification of the flesh and the exaltation of spirit. But this is simple vanity; a disgust with the limitations of human physicality in comparison with the exalted qualities of imagined gods and perhaps even with more perfect human specimens, a desire to be perfect, ideal in a Platonic sense, a resplendant being of light who does not fart or fuck or belch. A belief in spirit detached from the physical invites the hatred of life in all but principle, as all but stepping stone to the afterlife. The love of spirit becomes a loathing for humanity.
Finally, there is a claim that qualia are the most meaningful and significant of all experiences. The title of this post suggests the opposite. People that I have met who were veteran drug users are in the habit of making statements like "It's really a something!" "He's really doing something." "He's doing his scene." What do these statements mean? Nothing. They are utterly devoid of content, because they refer to the type of drug experiences in which the person is unable to integrate the experience. The tragedy of the youth drug culture is that, unlike the first pioneers of psychedelics, who were usually well versed in science, philosophy, literature, and mysticism, barely literate teenagers have no frame of reference. All they can say is "Wow!", and in retrospect, one wow is very much like another. These are raw qualia, but until they are drawn into the world of expression and related to other experience and knowledge, they remain physical noise. Qualia must cease to be qualia to acquire meaning. Only then do they properly become aspects of consciousness rather than the signals of the autonomic nervous system. Furthermore, it should be immediately apparent that, having been caused by a chemical, these experiences--which often approach the mystical--have an entirely physical basis.
There is a particular style of philosophical discussion which is properly called "nonsense on stilts"--discussions of things which neither refer to facts about the real world (do not touch the ground) nor involve precisely defined terms (nonsense). I suspect that metaphysics has not gained any ground since the ancient Greeks. It is not that they gave the final answers; they may not have even asked the right questions. The same arguments run back and forth without any resolution in sight, revolving around the definitions and redefinitions of vague words and concepts. These are language games. Some philosophers were so caught up in these games that they decided that all human interaction consisted of nothing more than language games, forgetting that most people actually devote most of their time talking about real things and events in the physical world. They had become so divorced from reality that they decided it did not exist. But any subject which does not bow to carefully gathered fact, or which does not restrict itself to concepts of near mathematical precision, will soon find itself building castles in the sky, to be cast down and raised again by whims of opinion. This is not knowledge, nor any way to achieve knowledge. This is mere sophistry. The stagnant condition of metaphysics and theology suggest that these disciplines are in precisely this rut.
When I first encountered metaphysics as a young undergraduate, it was my favorite topic. I thought I had discovered magic, a means of unraveling the secrets of the universe without ever being forced to learn about the world. Through the simple exploration and combination of vague concepts I could understand, and perhaps even affect, the world. I wonder how much of this still animates enthusiasm for metaphysics, and for non-physical explanations of reality. If consciousness is non-physical yet can still influence reality, then perhaps one can do away with the whole bother of moving and exploring, avoid death, even avoid the physical disciplines of the mystics required to attain peace of mind. It is this aspect of wishful thinking most of all that makes arguments for non-physicality suspect.
Most of the arguments for qualia and against the physicality of the mind employ thought experiments which slip in the assumption that no physical change has been wrought in the body or brain by the experience, effectively assuming the consequent; we assume no physical basis for the experience, and presto, there is no physical basis! The inverted spectrum and zombie thought experiments are examples of this. Others hinge on the idea that qualia are inexpressable--but this says nothing about qualia, and much about the limitations of language. In any case, one would expect that a purely idealized form of expression would be ill suited to describing purely physical phenomena--these arguments actually support the physical basis of mind and experience, rather than weaken it. To be a bat, to see a color, or to have any direct experience is a physical event, involving deep underlying experiences involving sensory organs, muscular/skeletal sensations, and so on. Choreographers are still seeking a notation for dance which can express even the most basic repertoire of movements. Imagine trying to describe not only the movements in detail, but the detailed experience of performing them! And yet, there can be absolutely no doubt that these are physical actions and sensations.
In fact, qualia are the most physical aspect of consciousness. In discussions of the ineffable, mystical insights are usually regarded as the ultimate ineffable experiences. But how do these often come about? Through extreme conditions of the body--fasting, exertion to the point of collapse, drugs, the deliberate self infliction of pain, or repetitive or long held postures or activities. These experiences are commonly induced through direct or indirect manipulation of neurochemical states. Yet the claims of mysticism are that one has overcome the body, when in fact they have manipulated their bodies to achieve these states. Even the most spiritual of experiences is, at its very roots, physical.
Steven Pinker, in a recent article regarding The Stupidity of Dignity notes that Leon Kass, who loaded a council on bioethics with staunch Catholics, regarded any physical act, even eating, as undignified--Kass railed against the indignity of eating ice cream cones in public. Likewise, Kass exalts the imagined spiritual properties of an ovum over the physical good of living people. His sympathy with Catholicism is all too clear; Catholicism too values the mortification of the flesh and the exaltation of spirit. But this is simple vanity; a disgust with the limitations of human physicality in comparison with the exalted qualities of imagined gods and perhaps even with more perfect human specimens, a desire to be perfect, ideal in a Platonic sense, a resplendant being of light who does not fart or fuck or belch. A belief in spirit detached from the physical invites the hatred of life in all but principle, as all but stepping stone to the afterlife. The love of spirit becomes a loathing for humanity.
Finally, there is a claim that qualia are the most meaningful and significant of all experiences. The title of this post suggests the opposite. People that I have met who were veteran drug users are in the habit of making statements like "It's really a something!" "He's really doing something." "He's doing his scene." What do these statements mean? Nothing. They are utterly devoid of content, because they refer to the type of drug experiences in which the person is unable to integrate the experience. The tragedy of the youth drug culture is that, unlike the first pioneers of psychedelics, who were usually well versed in science, philosophy, literature, and mysticism, barely literate teenagers have no frame of reference. All they can say is "Wow!", and in retrospect, one wow is very much like another. These are raw qualia, but until they are drawn into the world of expression and related to other experience and knowledge, they remain physical noise. Qualia must cease to be qualia to acquire meaning. Only then do they properly become aspects of consciousness rather than the signals of the autonomic nervous system. Furthermore, it should be immediately apparent that, having been caused by a chemical, these experiences--which often approach the mystical--have an entirely physical basis.
There is a particular style of philosophical discussion which is properly called "nonsense on stilts"--discussions of things which neither refer to facts about the real world (do not touch the ground) nor involve precisely defined terms (nonsense). I suspect that metaphysics has not gained any ground since the ancient Greeks. It is not that they gave the final answers; they may not have even asked the right questions. The same arguments run back and forth without any resolution in sight, revolving around the definitions and redefinitions of vague words and concepts. These are language games. Some philosophers were so caught up in these games that they decided that all human interaction consisted of nothing more than language games, forgetting that most people actually devote most of their time talking about real things and events in the physical world. They had become so divorced from reality that they decided it did not exist. But any subject which does not bow to carefully gathered fact, or which does not restrict itself to concepts of near mathematical precision, will soon find itself building castles in the sky, to be cast down and raised again by whims of opinion. This is not knowledge, nor any way to achieve knowledge. This is mere sophistry. The stagnant condition of metaphysics and theology suggest that these disciplines are in precisely this rut.
When I first encountered metaphysics as a young undergraduate, it was my favorite topic. I thought I had discovered magic, a means of unraveling the secrets of the universe without ever being forced to learn about the world. Through the simple exploration and combination of vague concepts I could understand, and perhaps even affect, the world. I wonder how much of this still animates enthusiasm for metaphysics, and for non-physical explanations of reality. If consciousness is non-physical yet can still influence reality, then perhaps one can do away with the whole bother of moving and exploring, avoid death, even avoid the physical disciplines of the mystics required to attain peace of mind. It is this aspect of wishful thinking most of all that makes arguments for non-physicality suspect.
Friday, May 09, 2008
The Estates
In Medieval France, the realm was divided into three estates: the first was the clergy, the second was the nobility, and the third was the common people, represented by the burghers. Later, Edmund Burke referred to the press as the fourth estate. In modern times, the nobility have more or less become obsolete, while the third estate has come to dominate the government. Another estate has risen to prominence as well; business has its own needs and agendas, particularly in the form of corporations who act as legal entities rather like people under the law. In the modern West, the estates would be better ordered as government (representing the people), business, religion, and media.
Various attempts have been made to name a fifth estate, often as segment of the press that dissents from the majority (fourth estate) view, but this simply emphasizes temporary public arguments. A better candidate would be academia, particularly the sciences, as the humanities might be considered an aspect of the fourth estate. While the fourth estate collects and dispenses data (news), the fifth estate is concerned with collating this data and identifying trends and general principles. This fifth estate would be different from the fourth particularly in the accuracy expected in its judgments, and in the time and effort required to render these judgements as well as their durability.
This leaves us with five estates: government, business, religion, media, and the sciences. One thing that strikes me about these estates is that a mixing of any two is a regarded, quite rightly, as a corrupting influence on both. A government official with a business interest in a particular matter has a conflict of interests, and is expected to recuse himself from any government dealing with that industry. Ministers who amass fortunes or use their churches as political springboards are also disparaged, and the separation of Church and State is now a near universal principle in the West. Media which serves the interests of business, government, or a particular church is considered biased and unreliable--even Fox news claims to be "fair and balanced". And scientific judgments which serve an interest other than science itself are also highly suspect--nor can a scientist be expected to deliver rapid fire results suitable to a media timeline without making serious and irresponsible errors.
It is precisely the mixing of all these estates in the Muslim world which brings it to its sorry state. Indeed, in Saudi Arabia, there is still a nobility, who own most of the businesses, run the government, and control the media, all according to religious principles, while science is barely pursued at all. The rest of the Muslim world is not much better, lacking only the nobility, but still permitting all The result is a riot of corruption without the rule of law--indeed, the closest thing they have to a justice system is a dubiously qualified assortment of clerics issuing idiosyncratic judgments which seem to relate more to their blood sugar levels than to any remote objective standard of justice. The result is brutality, waste, greed, ignorance, poverty, and injustice on an epic scale.
Dinesh D'Souza recently congratulated Christianity for being so much better than Islam, because Christian extremists are nowhere near as vicious as Islamic extremists. He is, of course, comparing present day Christianity to present day Islam. But for a proper comparison to be made, one would have to go back to a time when the estates were allowed to bleed together as they do in the Muslim world, when governments were governed and motivated by the dictates of Christian faiths. One would have to go back nearly five hundred years, to the wars of the Reformation.
With the rise of Protestantism, Europe split and took sides, Protestant vs Catholic. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the pages of European history are awash in blood spilled in the name of Christ. We have the Spanish Inquisition--orignally directed against Jews, it now turned on Protestants--the Witch Burnings, the execution of heretics, Henry VIII's persecution of Catholics, Mary Tudor's persecution of Protestants, Wolsingham's police state under Elizabeth, and innumerable wars, assassinations, and intrigues between all the great powers of Europe. This continued through the Stuarts, leading to the death of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell's bloody tyranny. Charles II calmed this somewhat by being almost completely secular throughout his reign, converting to Catholicism on his deathbed. His brother James was quickly deposed by William of Orange, who gained tolerance for Protestant non-conformists, but also sought tolerance for Catholics. The Act of Tolerance and the Bill of Rights strengthened the boundaries between the estates, and lead eventually to the end of the fighting between Catholics and Protestants, at least in England. In Northern Ireland, the wars of the Reformation have only just ended; the Protestants call themselves Orange (after William) and the Catholics are the Green.
One might argue that the kings and nobles exploited Christianity for their own ends--and you would be right. One might equally argue that the likes of William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King also directed Christianity in novel directions--and again, you would be right. The problem lies in the fact that any religion lends itself to the irrational and superstitious, which can be exploited to any purpose. And indeed, it was exploited for the justification of slavery, which was why Wilberforce and King were forced to couch their arguments in religious language; the language of their strongest opposition. D'Souza loves to cite Wilberforce and King, but never mentions Edgar Ray Killen, responsible for the murders depicted in the movie "Mississipi Burning"--Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen, as he was known, because he spewed his racist venom from the pulpit of a baptist church. And Killen was only one representative of a breed that encompassed hundreds, if not thousands, of preachers who did likewise throughout the period of slavery and up to the present day. Yet Wilberforce and King carried the day because the majority of the population objected to slavery on grounds which had little to do with religion and much to do with simple human empathy, an emotion which, happily, required no religious sentiments to support it.
What D'Souza would like us to forget is that the Christianity we see today is heavily shackled and sedated, tamed through long effort, often at great risk, by generations of great men and women who understood the danger of giving religion too much power. Charlie Manson hasn't killed in almost forty years, but that doesn't mean he's reformed, just restrained. We have lived so long with a religion tamed by secularism that we have forgotten why it had to be tamed in the first place, and why the estates had to be separated.
Various attempts have been made to name a fifth estate, often as segment of the press that dissents from the majority (fourth estate) view, but this simply emphasizes temporary public arguments. A better candidate would be academia, particularly the sciences, as the humanities might be considered an aspect of the fourth estate. While the fourth estate collects and dispenses data (news), the fifth estate is concerned with collating this data and identifying trends and general principles. This fifth estate would be different from the fourth particularly in the accuracy expected in its judgments, and in the time and effort required to render these judgements as well as their durability.
This leaves us with five estates: government, business, religion, media, and the sciences. One thing that strikes me about these estates is that a mixing of any two is a regarded, quite rightly, as a corrupting influence on both. A government official with a business interest in a particular matter has a conflict of interests, and is expected to recuse himself from any government dealing with that industry. Ministers who amass fortunes or use their churches as political springboards are also disparaged, and the separation of Church and State is now a near universal principle in the West. Media which serves the interests of business, government, or a particular church is considered biased and unreliable--even Fox news claims to be "fair and balanced". And scientific judgments which serve an interest other than science itself are also highly suspect--nor can a scientist be expected to deliver rapid fire results suitable to a media timeline without making serious and irresponsible errors.
It is precisely the mixing of all these estates in the Muslim world which brings it to its sorry state. Indeed, in Saudi Arabia, there is still a nobility, who own most of the businesses, run the government, and control the media, all according to religious principles, while science is barely pursued at all. The rest of the Muslim world is not much better, lacking only the nobility, but still permitting all The result is a riot of corruption without the rule of law--indeed, the closest thing they have to a justice system is a dubiously qualified assortment of clerics issuing idiosyncratic judgments which seem to relate more to their blood sugar levels than to any remote objective standard of justice. The result is brutality, waste, greed, ignorance, poverty, and injustice on an epic scale.
Dinesh D'Souza recently congratulated Christianity for being so much better than Islam, because Christian extremists are nowhere near as vicious as Islamic extremists. He is, of course, comparing present day Christianity to present day Islam. But for a proper comparison to be made, one would have to go back to a time when the estates were allowed to bleed together as they do in the Muslim world, when governments were governed and motivated by the dictates of Christian faiths. One would have to go back nearly five hundred years, to the wars of the Reformation.
With the rise of Protestantism, Europe split and took sides, Protestant vs Catholic. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the pages of European history are awash in blood spilled in the name of Christ. We have the Spanish Inquisition--orignally directed against Jews, it now turned on Protestants--the Witch Burnings, the execution of heretics, Henry VIII's persecution of Catholics, Mary Tudor's persecution of Protestants, Wolsingham's police state under Elizabeth, and innumerable wars, assassinations, and intrigues between all the great powers of Europe. This continued through the Stuarts, leading to the death of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell's bloody tyranny. Charles II calmed this somewhat by being almost completely secular throughout his reign, converting to Catholicism on his deathbed. His brother James was quickly deposed by William of Orange, who gained tolerance for Protestant non-conformists, but also sought tolerance for Catholics. The Act of Tolerance and the Bill of Rights strengthened the boundaries between the estates, and lead eventually to the end of the fighting between Catholics and Protestants, at least in England. In Northern Ireland, the wars of the Reformation have only just ended; the Protestants call themselves Orange (after William) and the Catholics are the Green.
One might argue that the kings and nobles exploited Christianity for their own ends--and you would be right. One might equally argue that the likes of William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King also directed Christianity in novel directions--and again, you would be right. The problem lies in the fact that any religion lends itself to the irrational and superstitious, which can be exploited to any purpose. And indeed, it was exploited for the justification of slavery, which was why Wilberforce and King were forced to couch their arguments in religious language; the language of their strongest opposition. D'Souza loves to cite Wilberforce and King, but never mentions Edgar Ray Killen, responsible for the murders depicted in the movie "Mississipi Burning"--Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen, as he was known, because he spewed his racist venom from the pulpit of a baptist church. And Killen was only one representative of a breed that encompassed hundreds, if not thousands, of preachers who did likewise throughout the period of slavery and up to the present day. Yet Wilberforce and King carried the day because the majority of the population objected to slavery on grounds which had little to do with religion and much to do with simple human empathy, an emotion which, happily, required no religious sentiments to support it.
What D'Souza would like us to forget is that the Christianity we see today is heavily shackled and sedated, tamed through long effort, often at great risk, by generations of great men and women who understood the danger of giving religion too much power. Charlie Manson hasn't killed in almost forty years, but that doesn't mean he's reformed, just restrained. We have lived so long with a religion tamed by secularism that we have forgotten why it had to be tamed in the first place, and why the estates had to be separated.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Dungeons and Dragons Tale
As Gary Gygax, inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, died yesterday, I thought it appropriate to have this D&D story for my weekly pizza message.
The Icy Door
"Okay, behind the door is a forty by forty room, empty but for a huge stone arch with mystical symbols on it." Tom drew the room onto the map on the table. "What do you do?"
"Can you describe the symbols?" Phil asked.
Tom rolled a dice behind his screen. "You've seen these before. They're on the parchment you found in the crystal room."
Jack found the piece of paper with the symbols on it. "There's a string of symbols here. Maybe we can input them into arch. I try touching the symbol on the arch that corresponds to the one at the top of the page."
"It lights up," said Tom. "The arch begins to hum with magical energy. You can hear the Lich arch-mage coming up the hall with his drow henchmen."
"Okay," said Jack, "I touch all the symbols in the sequence they appear on the parchment."
"The hum rises to a high pitched whine, and the gate activates with a flash. Beyond the arch you see a strange scene..."
Frank raised his hand. "No time--I'm taking my chances and going through!"
"Me too," said Jack. They all went through the gate. "What do we see?"
Tom smiled coyly. "You're on a strange, smooth grey road, with a lot of strange square buildings on it. There is another similar road that crosses it in a T about one hundred feet east. Behind you and the gate is a park; in front is a brick house and to the right of it is a square brick building three stories tall. Strange metallic carts line the side of the street."
Bill grinned. "Is there a strange, red, metal chariot sitting in front of the square building, by any chance?"
"Why yes," said Tom, "now that you mention it."
"Okay, we're running into that building and into apartment four!" Everyone laughed and agreed.
"Good!" said Tom, rubbing his hands. He made a dice check. "You run into the building, but as Enariel is the last in, she looks over her shoulder and sees the Lich come through the gate. He sees you. But you run up the stairs..."
At that moment, they heard the front door of the building open and several people run up the stairs, speaking loudly in a strange language. The door to the apartment swung open and in crowded a bizarre cast of characters. First was a hulking barbarian covered with battle scars and wielding a huge axe. Second was man in chain mail carrying a mace, with fringe cut hair greying at the temples. On his heels (heals?) was a man only three feet tall, with bare feet and furtive demeanor, carrying a dagger in each hand. Last came two women, find boned and diminutive, one carrying a bow and wearing leather armor and green leggings, and the other in a long robe; both had ears that rose to points.
The intruders and the players regarded each other with consternation for a moment. The barbarian barked something incomprehensible, but the players were too stunned to venture a guess as to what he was saying. The woman in the robe traced a symbol in the air, and then spoke in clear English: "Is there another door out of this place?"
Tom raised his hand feebly and pointed down the hall. The woman nodded and spoke to her companions, and all ran down the hallway and out the back door.
A long moment passed. "Weirdness," said Phil. "Exactly what I thought they'd look like," said Jack. And then he swallowed hard and asked, "Tom, did you say the Lich was right behind us... er, them?"
They heard the door to the building open again, and a rasping voice spoke in the stairwell. Light footsteps ran up and down the stairs, and then all returned, and seemed to focus on the area outside their door. There was a clicking sound upon the doorknob. As they watched, frost formed upon the knob, and vapour began to pour from it. The room grew noticeably colder as the knob began to turn.
Tom slammed his book shut. "I think," he said, in a strangled voice, "that we should call it here."
They stared at the door with baited breath. The knob snapped back to rest. At length, they exhaled, and began to pack their books and dice. They rose in silence, and stood in a tight knot, away from the door. "I need a change of underwear," said Bill.
"Ummm... I think I'll leave by the back," said Phil. The others nodded, and followed him down the hall.
Tom stood for a minute or so, then crept up to the door and flipped the deadbolt locked. The cold stung his fingers. Then he heard a harsh muttering, and the deadbolt snapped back, unlocked.
And then he was running down the hall, yelling "Phil, can I crash at your place tonight...?"
The Icy Door
"Okay, behind the door is a forty by forty room, empty but for a huge stone arch with mystical symbols on it." Tom drew the room onto the map on the table. "What do you do?"
"Can you describe the symbols?" Phil asked.
Tom rolled a dice behind his screen. "You've seen these before. They're on the parchment you found in the crystal room."
Jack found the piece of paper with the symbols on it. "There's a string of symbols here. Maybe we can input them into arch. I try touching the symbol on the arch that corresponds to the one at the top of the page."
"It lights up," said Tom. "The arch begins to hum with magical energy. You can hear the Lich arch-mage coming up the hall with his drow henchmen."
"Okay," said Jack, "I touch all the symbols in the sequence they appear on the parchment."
"The hum rises to a high pitched whine, and the gate activates with a flash. Beyond the arch you see a strange scene..."
Frank raised his hand. "No time--I'm taking my chances and going through!"
"Me too," said Jack. They all went through the gate. "What do we see?"
Tom smiled coyly. "You're on a strange, smooth grey road, with a lot of strange square buildings on it. There is another similar road that crosses it in a T about one hundred feet east. Behind you and the gate is a park; in front is a brick house and to the right of it is a square brick building three stories tall. Strange metallic carts line the side of the street."
Bill grinned. "Is there a strange, red, metal chariot sitting in front of the square building, by any chance?"
"Why yes," said Tom, "now that you mention it."
"Okay, we're running into that building and into apartment four!" Everyone laughed and agreed.
"Good!" said Tom, rubbing his hands. He made a dice check. "You run into the building, but as Enariel is the last in, she looks over her shoulder and sees the Lich come through the gate. He sees you. But you run up the stairs..."
At that moment, they heard the front door of the building open and several people run up the stairs, speaking loudly in a strange language. The door to the apartment swung open and in crowded a bizarre cast of characters. First was a hulking barbarian covered with battle scars and wielding a huge axe. Second was man in chain mail carrying a mace, with fringe cut hair greying at the temples. On his heels (heals?) was a man only three feet tall, with bare feet and furtive demeanor, carrying a dagger in each hand. Last came two women, find boned and diminutive, one carrying a bow and wearing leather armor and green leggings, and the other in a long robe; both had ears that rose to points.
The intruders and the players regarded each other with consternation for a moment. The barbarian barked something incomprehensible, but the players were too stunned to venture a guess as to what he was saying. The woman in the robe traced a symbol in the air, and then spoke in clear English: "Is there another door out of this place?"
Tom raised his hand feebly and pointed down the hall. The woman nodded and spoke to her companions, and all ran down the hallway and out the back door.
A long moment passed. "Weirdness," said Phil. "Exactly what I thought they'd look like," said Jack. And then he swallowed hard and asked, "Tom, did you say the Lich was right behind us... er, them?"
They heard the door to the building open again, and a rasping voice spoke in the stairwell. Light footsteps ran up and down the stairs, and then all returned, and seemed to focus on the area outside their door. There was a clicking sound upon the doorknob. As they watched, frost formed upon the knob, and vapour began to pour from it. The room grew noticeably colder as the knob began to turn.
Tom slammed his book shut. "I think," he said, in a strangled voice, "that we should call it here."
They stared at the door with baited breath. The knob snapped back to rest. At length, they exhaled, and began to pack their books and dice. They rose in silence, and stood in a tight knot, away from the door. "I need a change of underwear," said Bill.
"Ummm... I think I'll leave by the back," said Phil. The others nodded, and followed him down the hall.
Tom stood for a minute or so, then crept up to the door and flipped the deadbolt locked. The cold stung his fingers. Then he heard a harsh muttering, and the deadbolt snapped back, unlocked.
And then he was running down the hall, yelling "Phil, can I crash at your place tonight...?"
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Conservative Contradictions
A friend of mine sometimes infuriates me by espousing both Libertarianism and totalitarian authoritarianism--often in the same breath. Yes, big L libertarianism, sometimes to the extreme of Ayn Rand, and advocating amongst other things martial law and putting liberals up against the wall. I have my problems with both, more with authoritarianism and totalitarianism--I tend to agree with small L libertarianism, with full recognition of the proviso that capitalism is a joint venture between private industry and government, and cannot exist without the services and protection government provides. Libertarianism is also based upon the fantastical creature Homo Economicus--the rationally self-optimizing individual who exists only in economics textbooks, as studies too numerous to name have proven. But libertarianism is based upon the core belief that people know what's best for themselves, while authoritarianism is constructed on the principle that the people cannot be trusted and must be told what to do. They are, at root, fundamentally incompatible. His head is like a bag lady's cart, loaded with random baggage which does not go together.
And yet, in reading tributes to William F. Buckley this week, I see that he shared the same incoherent split: libertarian and authoritarian. He was amongst the first to advocate decriminalization of soft drugs, and yet he also harbored a desire for the legislation of morality. I had a great admiration for Buckley, but where does this come from?
It comes, I think, from a reactionary response to Communism. Communism was economically totalitarian, socially libertarian, and atheistic. Buckley was a Catholic, and Fascism was the Catholic political response to Communism. Communism split Christianity in two; it espoused (but never practiced) the ethic of charity, and inflicted an iron grip upon economic activity. The opposite is Buckley's conservativism, which abandoned charity but clung to the authoritarianism of the Catholic Church. The result is a hodge podge of Libertarianism, by which you are no longer your brother's keeper, and moral despotism, by which you become your brother's keeper, and indeed, your brother's master. Reactionaries to Communism called anything that contradicted their views Communist, and so forgot what they were fighting against. They fired at everything, and lost sight of the goal.
These paired opposites are contradictory. Consistancy is the goblin of small minds only when it is a consistancy over time; the stubborn pig-headedness which insists that it was always right. Inconsistancy between views held all at once is dogmatism--equally small minded, and founded upon a lack of self-awareness. The dogmatism at work here is anti-communism. More recently, it has been replaced with anti-liberalism--even though libertarianism is a liberal doctrine. And so we now have secular conservatives who are comically attached to authoritarianism but who are no longer attached to religiosity, not realizing the roots of these opinions. They ape their masters without understanding them. Oddly enough, the Communists themselves railed endlessly against decadence; a position of moral authoritarianism remarkably similar to that of conservatives.
To be a consistant Christian, you may be morally authoritarian (but not necessarily), but you must be egalitarian and charitable. This is the main and repeated message of the gospels. You can, of course, abandon Christian ethics and go entirely secular, and if you are conservative be libertarian across the board. Or you can be entirely Christian and push for charity and moralistic laws. But you cannot do both in a consistent manner.
The split goes still further. Conservatives are obsessed with freeloaders, people who take but do not pay into the system. This would, of course, include those who refuse to pay their taxes, a common pose amongst conservatives. An obvious contradiction, but not the one I'm going for. In order to catch freeloaders, an elaborate system of checks must be established--and a large bureaucracy to oversee the dispensation of money. Each critic of the system, who finds a single notorious case of exploitation, necessitates an extra layer of bureaucracy to double check the work of the existing bureaucracy. The opposition and the press all play into this game, leading to the zero-error ethic. And the best way to make no mistakes is to do nothing; a bloated bureaucracy that does nothing and provides no significant services--the nightmare of small government conservatives, created in large part by... small government conservatives.
There is a cutoff point where it is cheaper to let some people defraud the system than to expend the energy to catch them all. But in the media and in political sound bytes, one case of fraud is enough to embarrass the government. And so we endlessly pursue ghosts, and the cost forever escalates, and services decline. A friend of mine who works in the Canadian government says that each document she produces must go through fifteen layers of approval to make it to the cabinet. All fifteen layers have been instituted recently, to protect the government from embarrasment--by a conservative government, who made its mandate by pointing out cases of fraud.
In government, there is no cutoff point at which it costs more to the incumbent party to protect itself from embarrassment than it does to allow a few mistakes to get by to provide baseline services--unless the government takes responsibility and explains costs and benefits, and since conservatives don't believe in government, the benefits are never considered worth the cost. Eventually, all revenue will be consumed by the bureaucracy. Let's take another bete noir of conservatives: health care. Private medical insurance profits by denying health care and keeping the premiums. As long as they can get away with doing this, it makes sense to keep denying health care until the bureaucracy of denial equals the cost of providing the health care. In other words, private health care will reach an equilibrium where at least half of the money spent on health care goes to administration rather than actual medical services (and probably more than half, since even providing the service requires administrative costs.) Public health care, where denial is not an issue, is not subject to the same dynamic. America spends 15% of its GDP (the highest in the world) on health care, and yet 25% of its people are entirely excluded, while a great many more are left stranded when they need it most, even though they are insured. The Europeans spend about 12% on lavish systems that provide everything to everyone. Canada spends 8 to 9%--we are starving the system, probably quite deliberately, as American HMO's are clawing at the door and lobbying intensively. The 50% ratio for expense to service appears to be borne out by a comparison of the American vs. Canadian health care systems, if you compare efficiency, coverage, and price.
The moralistic, authoritarian streak leads to big government. Liberalism leads to big government, but only within fiscal limits--big government financed by deficits results in a delayed tax burden on the poor and middle class, which liberals despise because it compromises their ability to govern. Big money is a flight risk, so they cannot be counted on to foot the bill--another contradiction to the freeloader argument, since the rich gain a disproportionately larger benefit from infrastructure. Conservatives, however, consider government a lost cause, and debt an inevitable result. And since they are so accustomed to flinging accusations of mismanagement, when their turn comes around, all resources go to defending against such charges, actual or possible. And yet no one has higher levels of pork barrel spending, precisely because corporate interests are much slicker in concealing their attempts to defraud the system. There has not been a fiscally responsible conservative government since Margaret Thatcher, and the pattern is so entrenched that it is not likely to end short of a massive overhaul of conservativism.
During the cold war and the culture wars, the left lost their minds, but the right lost their souls. I've gone on at great length in other posts about the failures of the left--political correctness, post-modernism, multiculturalism, anti-rationalism, etc. But the right is no better, no less partisan, and no less irrational. On the left there has been a great foment, and old prejudices and foolish alliances have been shed, though not by its less illustrious members. But the right clings to the consistency of small minds, while dispensing with the consistency of sound minds. With the death of Buckley, and the continued efforts of the likes of Tim O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, what is the likelihood that the right will reform its ways?
And yet, in reading tributes to William F. Buckley this week, I see that he shared the same incoherent split: libertarian and authoritarian. He was amongst the first to advocate decriminalization of soft drugs, and yet he also harbored a desire for the legislation of morality. I had a great admiration for Buckley, but where does this come from?
It comes, I think, from a reactionary response to Communism. Communism was economically totalitarian, socially libertarian, and atheistic. Buckley was a Catholic, and Fascism was the Catholic political response to Communism. Communism split Christianity in two; it espoused (but never practiced) the ethic of charity, and inflicted an iron grip upon economic activity. The opposite is Buckley's conservativism, which abandoned charity but clung to the authoritarianism of the Catholic Church. The result is a hodge podge of Libertarianism, by which you are no longer your brother's keeper, and moral despotism, by which you become your brother's keeper, and indeed, your brother's master. Reactionaries to Communism called anything that contradicted their views Communist, and so forgot what they were fighting against. They fired at everything, and lost sight of the goal.
These paired opposites are contradictory. Consistancy is the goblin of small minds only when it is a consistancy over time; the stubborn pig-headedness which insists that it was always right. Inconsistancy between views held all at once is dogmatism--equally small minded, and founded upon a lack of self-awareness. The dogmatism at work here is anti-communism. More recently, it has been replaced with anti-liberalism--even though libertarianism is a liberal doctrine. And so we now have secular conservatives who are comically attached to authoritarianism but who are no longer attached to religiosity, not realizing the roots of these opinions. They ape their masters without understanding them. Oddly enough, the Communists themselves railed endlessly against decadence; a position of moral authoritarianism remarkably similar to that of conservatives.
To be a consistant Christian, you may be morally authoritarian (but not necessarily), but you must be egalitarian and charitable. This is the main and repeated message of the gospels. You can, of course, abandon Christian ethics and go entirely secular, and if you are conservative be libertarian across the board. Or you can be entirely Christian and push for charity and moralistic laws. But you cannot do both in a consistent manner.
The split goes still further. Conservatives are obsessed with freeloaders, people who take but do not pay into the system. This would, of course, include those who refuse to pay their taxes, a common pose amongst conservatives. An obvious contradiction, but not the one I'm going for. In order to catch freeloaders, an elaborate system of checks must be established--and a large bureaucracy to oversee the dispensation of money. Each critic of the system, who finds a single notorious case of exploitation, necessitates an extra layer of bureaucracy to double check the work of the existing bureaucracy. The opposition and the press all play into this game, leading to the zero-error ethic. And the best way to make no mistakes is to do nothing; a bloated bureaucracy that does nothing and provides no significant services--the nightmare of small government conservatives, created in large part by... small government conservatives.
There is a cutoff point where it is cheaper to let some people defraud the system than to expend the energy to catch them all. But in the media and in political sound bytes, one case of fraud is enough to embarrass the government. And so we endlessly pursue ghosts, and the cost forever escalates, and services decline. A friend of mine who works in the Canadian government says that each document she produces must go through fifteen layers of approval to make it to the cabinet. All fifteen layers have been instituted recently, to protect the government from embarrasment--by a conservative government, who made its mandate by pointing out cases of fraud.
In government, there is no cutoff point at which it costs more to the incumbent party to protect itself from embarrassment than it does to allow a few mistakes to get by to provide baseline services--unless the government takes responsibility and explains costs and benefits, and since conservatives don't believe in government, the benefits are never considered worth the cost. Eventually, all revenue will be consumed by the bureaucracy. Let's take another bete noir of conservatives: health care. Private medical insurance profits by denying health care and keeping the premiums. As long as they can get away with doing this, it makes sense to keep denying health care until the bureaucracy of denial equals the cost of providing the health care. In other words, private health care will reach an equilibrium where at least half of the money spent on health care goes to administration rather than actual medical services (and probably more than half, since even providing the service requires administrative costs.) Public health care, where denial is not an issue, is not subject to the same dynamic. America spends 15% of its GDP (the highest in the world) on health care, and yet 25% of its people are entirely excluded, while a great many more are left stranded when they need it most, even though they are insured. The Europeans spend about 12% on lavish systems that provide everything to everyone. Canada spends 8 to 9%--we are starving the system, probably quite deliberately, as American HMO's are clawing at the door and lobbying intensively. The 50% ratio for expense to service appears to be borne out by a comparison of the American vs. Canadian health care systems, if you compare efficiency, coverage, and price.
The moralistic, authoritarian streak leads to big government. Liberalism leads to big government, but only within fiscal limits--big government financed by deficits results in a delayed tax burden on the poor and middle class, which liberals despise because it compromises their ability to govern. Big money is a flight risk, so they cannot be counted on to foot the bill--another contradiction to the freeloader argument, since the rich gain a disproportionately larger benefit from infrastructure. Conservatives, however, consider government a lost cause, and debt an inevitable result. And since they are so accustomed to flinging accusations of mismanagement, when their turn comes around, all resources go to defending against such charges, actual or possible. And yet no one has higher levels of pork barrel spending, precisely because corporate interests are much slicker in concealing their attempts to defraud the system. There has not been a fiscally responsible conservative government since Margaret Thatcher, and the pattern is so entrenched that it is not likely to end short of a massive overhaul of conservativism.
During the cold war and the culture wars, the left lost their minds, but the right lost their souls. I've gone on at great length in other posts about the failures of the left--political correctness, post-modernism, multiculturalism, anti-rationalism, etc. But the right is no better, no less partisan, and no less irrational. On the left there has been a great foment, and old prejudices and foolish alliances have been shed, though not by its less illustrious members. But the right clings to the consistency of small minds, while dispensing with the consistency of sound minds. With the death of Buckley, and the continued efforts of the likes of Tim O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, what is the likelihood that the right will reform its ways?
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Wagging the Dog
I've long wondered why American Foreign policy is so disastrous. There is, of course, the long history of the cold war, in which the military and intelligence community backed whatever asshole they thought would help them in the fight, and came down hard on anyone deemed to be leftists. The tragedy here was that they often came down on democratic leftists, who were, despite their leanings towards Marxism, willing to negotiate for the benefit of their people. The glow of Marxism was bound to wear off, but not the glow of democracy. It was America's business to back their political ideals, rather than capitalism. Democracy is front and center in the constitution, but capitalism is not. The tragedy is that these people did not actually believe in democracy or capitalism, or they would have played to their strengths, letting the people of foreign nations choose what worked, secure in the knowledge that political and economic freedom were exactly what worked. But they swallowed Soviet propaganda without question, and believed that Communism had the upper hand.
But there is another factor involved here, which persisted long after the East Bloc fell. America allows its business community to run rampant in other countries. Worse yet, when those business interests run afoul of the local government and the local people, the American military is called in to grease the wheels of commerce.
A democratic government works for its people. That means they get the best price for their resource and commodities--market value. Only a dictator has the power to set those prices below market value, to enforce, for a cut, a price that the buyers specify. The dictator only need reward himself and his cronies; there is no requirement to do the best for his people. Not surprisingly, it is dictators that business interests prefer. In defense, the hatchetmen insist that American consumers are the ones who demand what they do. And yet, the market for fair trade goods and responsible business practices has never been greater. Why? Because for the first time, the people are beginning to understand the consequences of their economic choices.
The executives of these companies, and the hatchetmen, imagine the average American in their own image; greedy, selfish, unconcerned with the consequences of their own actions. They believe this only because they have never bothered to ask. But then, that would be democratic. It is a sad fact that most of these executives have utter disdain not only for democracy, but for free markets as well. They attempt, whenever possible, to enlist government and even the military to enforce their own agenda. Not for them the difficult details of real business; no, they want to enforce a profit margin in a way that no democratic country ruled by law would permit.
And if they had their way, no country would be ruled by law, which establishes equality of individual choice. but rather by force. Force imposes arrangements that lay outside the market, beyond the choices of all participants. The fault of American foreign policy is to allow and abet this, in contradiction to all its principles and the will of the American people.
It is a sad fact that capitalism, left to its own devices, will seek to undermine itself through the greed of its most powerful actors. Marx predicted this, although he had no solution. The solution is democracy, a tactic Marxists seem to be strongly averse to. Too bad. They might have won the ideological wars, rather than being another corpse in the abattoir of history. As it is, they deserved to die.
The solution is a government strong enough to stand up to industry and dictate policy to them, rather than the other way around. England got suckered into the same deal with the East India Company, and we're still all paying for that. Americans need a government that can say no to corporate interests. The tail must not wag the dog. The government must set foreign policy in accordance with the people's wishes--and the people must be made aware.
Bet on the people of the foreign country. Dictators are a dime a dozen. But the people are always there. How much was Saddam Hussein worth?
But there is another factor involved here, which persisted long after the East Bloc fell. America allows its business community to run rampant in other countries. Worse yet, when those business interests run afoul of the local government and the local people, the American military is called in to grease the wheels of commerce.
A democratic government works for its people. That means they get the best price for their resource and commodities--market value. Only a dictator has the power to set those prices below market value, to enforce, for a cut, a price that the buyers specify. The dictator only need reward himself and his cronies; there is no requirement to do the best for his people. Not surprisingly, it is dictators that business interests prefer. In defense, the hatchetmen insist that American consumers are the ones who demand what they do. And yet, the market for fair trade goods and responsible business practices has never been greater. Why? Because for the first time, the people are beginning to understand the consequences of their economic choices.
The executives of these companies, and the hatchetmen, imagine the average American in their own image; greedy, selfish, unconcerned with the consequences of their own actions. They believe this only because they have never bothered to ask. But then, that would be democratic. It is a sad fact that most of these executives have utter disdain not only for democracy, but for free markets as well. They attempt, whenever possible, to enlist government and even the military to enforce their own agenda. Not for them the difficult details of real business; no, they want to enforce a profit margin in a way that no democratic country ruled by law would permit.
And if they had their way, no country would be ruled by law, which establishes equality of individual choice. but rather by force. Force imposes arrangements that lay outside the market, beyond the choices of all participants. The fault of American foreign policy is to allow and abet this, in contradiction to all its principles and the will of the American people.
It is a sad fact that capitalism, left to its own devices, will seek to undermine itself through the greed of its most powerful actors. Marx predicted this, although he had no solution. The solution is democracy, a tactic Marxists seem to be strongly averse to. Too bad. They might have won the ideological wars, rather than being another corpse in the abattoir of history. As it is, they deserved to die.
The solution is a government strong enough to stand up to industry and dictate policy to them, rather than the other way around. England got suckered into the same deal with the East India Company, and we're still all paying for that. Americans need a government that can say no to corporate interests. The tail must not wag the dog. The government must set foreign policy in accordance with the people's wishes--and the people must be made aware.
Bet on the people of the foreign country. Dictators are a dime a dozen. But the people are always there. How much was Saddam Hussein worth?
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Short Story: "Special" Forces
Colonel Thomson:
In keeping with Airborne policy to maintain a force of the best and the brightest, we have discovered a number of personel who do not meet that qualification. To put it bluntly, they are dumbfucks. To put it even more bluntly, they have been trained in elite killing techniques, which means that they are now probably sociopathic dumbfucks.
We are at a loss as to what to do with them, so we are giving them to you. You are to take these men and assemble them into the Tactically Abridged Response Detail, or T.A.R.D. Make us proud, Colonel.
General Jim Ehrman
Airborne Command
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson's Command Log
Entry 21/07/07
What have I gotten myself into. I have 22 men who take best of three tries to get their pants on, and I've given up on getting them to put the fly in front. One of the men decided to keep his lunch for later, soup--in his helmet, on his head. They have taken to greeting me with the words "Who do we kill today, sir!", and it takes a few minutes to get the message across that we aren't killing anyone today, thank you. This is always a disappointment to the troops.
My troops are somewhat... idiosyncratic. Pvt. Robert Hadley believes his gun is a club, which he uses, I must admit, with some effect, being 7'2" and 350 pounds. Pvt. Harry Richards wants a bigger gun, always a bigger gun, that makes a bigger boom. Pvt. Jim Franklin keeps asking me who the enemy is, and points to random people and asks whether they're the enemy. What if one day he thinks I'm the enemy? Blanks all around. Pvt. John Crews was a dart champion back home, and prefers throwing knives--and grenades. And Pvt. Billy Anderson is a superb marksman who can strip down, clean, and reassemble his gun in less than a minute, but loud noises freak him out, and he cowers and screams after the first shot.
My cup runneth over.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson:
As most of our troops are over there, you are the only fighting force in the vicinity. We have a hostage situation at a nearby convention center which requires an immediate response. Get you men over to the Crown Plaza Hotel, ASAP.
General Jim Ehrman
Airborne Command
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson's Command Log
Entry 10/09/07
We arrived two blocks from the hotel, but there were logistical problems. Specifically, Pvts Haydn, Kowalchuk, and Turner spotted a Pizza Pizza, and decided they wanted lunch. It turned out to be easier just to let them have it. Twenty minutes and $85 dollars later, we headed for the hotel. I was able to prevent Franklin from shooting suspicious traffic by having Hadley carry him most of the way.
Our orders were to open with negotiations, but Hadley had an unusual interpretation on the concept, and bludgeoned the man who came out to meet us into a bloody pulp. Shots came at us from the hotel, although I think they were aiming for Hadley's head, which I suspect is made of granite. Phillips returned fire, Harrelson shot Phillips, and I shot Harrelson. Franklin correctly identified the enemy and took one out, which clued the rest of the squad into the general idea. And then it happened.
Who the hell gave Richards the goddamn ROCKET LAUNCHER?!? It took out the lobby, the elevators, and most of the facade. It also, as it turned out, took out the terrorists, except for one that I found Hadley playing with later. Not a pretty sight. Fortunately the hostages were all in the room in the basement. They lived. We lost only Phillips and Harrelson. Hadley had a few dents in his face, which faded quickly, but was otherwise unperturbed. Billy Anderson cowered and screamed through the whole thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson:
My congratulations again on your last mission but we need more of your special services. Another terrorist squad has taken control of the city police station on Nelson Street. Be warned that the terrorists are also dressed as cops. It will take great skill to pull this off, and save the real cops. Good luck, Colonel.
General Jim Ehrman
Airborne Command
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson's Command Log
Entry 24/09/07
I should have never told them that their first priority was to keep me safe. I figured this would mean that I would be safe to command them and prevent things from going south. I never considered that this would convince them to throw me in a dumpster, close the lid, and put an engine block on it. As it was, I spent the whole damn mission in the dark, up to my waist in garbage.
It tried to run things through the radio, but they were all shouting, and someone was reciting Dr. Seuss between auto-bursts. All I could hear was gunfire and screaming. When it all went quiet, and they took me out of the dumpster, they told me they couldn't find any cops.
As it turns out, there were no terrorists. How the hell was I supposed to know that General Ehrman was on psych leave? I didn't get the memo. So my T.A.R.D.s wiped out a real police station. Only took two casualties. It almost makes me proud.
And Richards is damn good with a rocket launcher.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson:
In keeping with the indeterminate status of yourself and your T.A.R.D.s, we have decided that a more discreet assignment may be in order. It has come to our attention that an exchange will be happening in northern Pakistan between Al Quaeda and rogue members of the Pakistani military, which may involve nuclear materials. We want you to stop this.
As you will be in Pakistan, we will deny any involvement. Nor will any extraction be available. You are welcome to take whatever you can there, but understand that you are on your own, and must be considered expendable. We urge you to make your own arrangement afterwards, but you may not return here.
Colonel Daniel Stiller
Black Ops
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson's Command Log
Entry 12/02/08
Well, I'm screwed. At least we get the pick of whatever equipment we want. Hadley never fires his gun, so fuck it, I got him a battle axe. He loves it. I got Richards an even bigger rocket launcher, three of them, in fact. The rest got everything they wanted, and plenty of it.
We got dropped about ten miles from the site, and made our way quietly there. Hadley and Crews came in real handy here; knives and a battle axe don't make a lot of noise, so perimeter security was not a problem. We got to the site with about an hour to spare, and I kept watch over the ridge. Below was a cave with a lot of men milling about expectantly.
Not long after, a truck could be seen approaching, and below a man came out with a large suitcase, accompanied by another guy who was obviously in charge. I looked through the binoculars, and I'll be fucked if it wasn't Bin Laden.
I didn't give the order, but Richards picks up his first rocket launcher and nails the truck while its still a hundred yards out. Hadley roars and runs over the ridge, swinging his battle axe, and he's all they can see, so they start shooting at him. I figure he'll go down in a hail of bullets, but all they manage to do is annoy him, which is not a good thing to do to a sociopathic dumbfuck in a roid rage. Franklin has figured out who the enemy is by now, and he gets in on the action. Bin Laden was walking towards the approaching truck, which is now a flaming wreck, so he goes for another truck parked nearby, which Richards sends into a triple backflip half-twist with another rocket, knocking Bin Laden on his ass. Men start pouring out of the cave to help him, and all my team starts firing. Crews switches to grenades, which don't seem to bother Hadley, but causes considerable inconvenience to his opponents.
It is at this point that Billy stops screaming and works out the source of the problem.
He calms right the fuck down, gets a glint in his eye that would pierce six inches of steel plate, and starts picking them off, one shot every second, each one an instant kill. When Bin Laden starts to go for the cave mouth, Billy gets a bolt of inspiration and takes out his legs, so men keep pouring out of the cave to help him, and now all my men are in on the turkey shoot, while Hadley keeps swinging his axe.
When they stop coming out, Hadley goes into the cave. He's done in about five minutes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Frank Thomson's Diary
Cancun, Mexico
Nice little hotel, nice town. We bought both. There was $30 million in the suitcase, and another $15 million in the cave. We collected $50 million for the bounty on Bin Laden, and another $10 million for what was left of the bomb in the truck. The bag man who collected the packages seemed to be waffling on the deal, but Billy gave him THE LOOK. We got paid in full.
Things are good. The T.A.R.D.s have taken a liking to the people here, and don't like anyone messing with them. The local standard of living has improved considerably. Some banditos tried to move in on us, because they heard we were loaded. We are; locked and loaded. Franklin spotted them a mile away. Billy has a very nice gun now. They didn't last long. Billy's very calm these days. He's got it all figured out.
And Hadley is our doorman. Security is not an issue.
In keeping with Airborne policy to maintain a force of the best and the brightest, we have discovered a number of personel who do not meet that qualification. To put it bluntly, they are dumbfucks. To put it even more bluntly, they have been trained in elite killing techniques, which means that they are now probably sociopathic dumbfucks.
We are at a loss as to what to do with them, so we are giving them to you. You are to take these men and assemble them into the Tactically Abridged Response Detail, or T.A.R.D. Make us proud, Colonel.
General Jim Ehrman
Airborne Command
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson's Command Log
Entry 21/07/07
What have I gotten myself into. I have 22 men who take best of three tries to get their pants on, and I've given up on getting them to put the fly in front. One of the men decided to keep his lunch for later, soup--in his helmet, on his head. They have taken to greeting me with the words "Who do we kill today, sir!", and it takes a few minutes to get the message across that we aren't killing anyone today, thank you. This is always a disappointment to the troops.
My troops are somewhat... idiosyncratic. Pvt. Robert Hadley believes his gun is a club, which he uses, I must admit, with some effect, being 7'2" and 350 pounds. Pvt. Harry Richards wants a bigger gun, always a bigger gun, that makes a bigger boom. Pvt. Jim Franklin keeps asking me who the enemy is, and points to random people and asks whether they're the enemy. What if one day he thinks I'm the enemy? Blanks all around. Pvt. John Crews was a dart champion back home, and prefers throwing knives--and grenades. And Pvt. Billy Anderson is a superb marksman who can strip down, clean, and reassemble his gun in less than a minute, but loud noises freak him out, and he cowers and screams after the first shot.
My cup runneth over.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson:
As most of our troops are over there, you are the only fighting force in the vicinity. We have a hostage situation at a nearby convention center which requires an immediate response. Get you men over to the Crown Plaza Hotel, ASAP.
General Jim Ehrman
Airborne Command
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson's Command Log
Entry 10/09/07
We arrived two blocks from the hotel, but there were logistical problems. Specifically, Pvts Haydn, Kowalchuk, and Turner spotted a Pizza Pizza, and decided they wanted lunch. It turned out to be easier just to let them have it. Twenty minutes and $85 dollars later, we headed for the hotel. I was able to prevent Franklin from shooting suspicious traffic by having Hadley carry him most of the way.
Our orders were to open with negotiations, but Hadley had an unusual interpretation on the concept, and bludgeoned the man who came out to meet us into a bloody pulp. Shots came at us from the hotel, although I think they were aiming for Hadley's head, which I suspect is made of granite. Phillips returned fire, Harrelson shot Phillips, and I shot Harrelson. Franklin correctly identified the enemy and took one out, which clued the rest of the squad into the general idea. And then it happened.
Who the hell gave Richards the goddamn ROCKET LAUNCHER?!? It took out the lobby, the elevators, and most of the facade. It also, as it turned out, took out the terrorists, except for one that I found Hadley playing with later. Not a pretty sight. Fortunately the hostages were all in the room in the basement. They lived. We lost only Phillips and Harrelson. Hadley had a few dents in his face, which faded quickly, but was otherwise unperturbed. Billy Anderson cowered and screamed through the whole thing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson:
My congratulations again on your last mission but we need more of your special services. Another terrorist squad has taken control of the city police station on Nelson Street. Be warned that the terrorists are also dressed as cops. It will take great skill to pull this off, and save the real cops. Good luck, Colonel.
General Jim Ehrman
Airborne Command
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson's Command Log
Entry 24/09/07
I should have never told them that their first priority was to keep me safe. I figured this would mean that I would be safe to command them and prevent things from going south. I never considered that this would convince them to throw me in a dumpster, close the lid, and put an engine block on it. As it was, I spent the whole damn mission in the dark, up to my waist in garbage.
It tried to run things through the radio, but they were all shouting, and someone was reciting Dr. Seuss between auto-bursts. All I could hear was gunfire and screaming. When it all went quiet, and they took me out of the dumpster, they told me they couldn't find any cops.
As it turns out, there were no terrorists. How the hell was I supposed to know that General Ehrman was on psych leave? I didn't get the memo. So my T.A.R.D.s wiped out a real police station. Only took two casualties. It almost makes me proud.
And Richards is damn good with a rocket launcher.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson:
In keeping with the indeterminate status of yourself and your T.A.R.D.s, we have decided that a more discreet assignment may be in order. It has come to our attention that an exchange will be happening in northern Pakistan between Al Quaeda and rogue members of the Pakistani military, which may involve nuclear materials. We want you to stop this.
As you will be in Pakistan, we will deny any involvement. Nor will any extraction be available. You are welcome to take whatever you can there, but understand that you are on your own, and must be considered expendable. We urge you to make your own arrangement afterwards, but you may not return here.
Colonel Daniel Stiller
Black Ops
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Colonel Thomson's Command Log
Entry 12/02/08
Well, I'm screwed. At least we get the pick of whatever equipment we want. Hadley never fires his gun, so fuck it, I got him a battle axe. He loves it. I got Richards an even bigger rocket launcher, three of them, in fact. The rest got everything they wanted, and plenty of it.
We got dropped about ten miles from the site, and made our way quietly there. Hadley and Crews came in real handy here; knives and a battle axe don't make a lot of noise, so perimeter security was not a problem. We got to the site with about an hour to spare, and I kept watch over the ridge. Below was a cave with a lot of men milling about expectantly.
Not long after, a truck could be seen approaching, and below a man came out with a large suitcase, accompanied by another guy who was obviously in charge. I looked through the binoculars, and I'll be fucked if it wasn't Bin Laden.
I didn't give the order, but Richards picks up his first rocket launcher and nails the truck while its still a hundred yards out. Hadley roars and runs over the ridge, swinging his battle axe, and he's all they can see, so they start shooting at him. I figure he'll go down in a hail of bullets, but all they manage to do is annoy him, which is not a good thing to do to a sociopathic dumbfuck in a roid rage. Franklin has figured out who the enemy is by now, and he gets in on the action. Bin Laden was walking towards the approaching truck, which is now a flaming wreck, so he goes for another truck parked nearby, which Richards sends into a triple backflip half-twist with another rocket, knocking Bin Laden on his ass. Men start pouring out of the cave to help him, and all my team starts firing. Crews switches to grenades, which don't seem to bother Hadley, but causes considerable inconvenience to his opponents.
It is at this point that Billy stops screaming and works out the source of the problem.
He calms right the fuck down, gets a glint in his eye that would pierce six inches of steel plate, and starts picking them off, one shot every second, each one an instant kill. When Bin Laden starts to go for the cave mouth, Billy gets a bolt of inspiration and takes out his legs, so men keep pouring out of the cave to help him, and now all my men are in on the turkey shoot, while Hadley keeps swinging his axe.
When they stop coming out, Hadley goes into the cave. He's done in about five minutes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Frank Thomson's Diary
Cancun, Mexico
Nice little hotel, nice town. We bought both. There was $30 million in the suitcase, and another $15 million in the cave. We collected $50 million for the bounty on Bin Laden, and another $10 million for what was left of the bomb in the truck. The bag man who collected the packages seemed to be waffling on the deal, but Billy gave him THE LOOK. We got paid in full.
Things are good. The T.A.R.D.s have taken a liking to the people here, and don't like anyone messing with them. The local standard of living has improved considerably. Some banditos tried to move in on us, because they heard we were loaded. We are; locked and loaded. Franklin spotted them a mile away. Billy has a very nice gun now. They didn't last long. Billy's very calm these days. He's got it all figured out.
And Hadley is our doorman. Security is not an issue.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Dimensions of Belief
There appear to be three dimensions of belief relevant in discussions of religion and dogma in general.
Natural vs. Supernatural: This, I think, is the one closest to our hearts, with us as Naturalists in opposition to all forms of magical thinking, from the cheap tricks of Uri Geller and Sylvia Browne to miraculous interventions claimed by most religious believers. In fact, this distinction runs through both atheist and theistic camps; the Nazis and the Stalinists were notorious dabblers in the occult. Supernaturalists in full advance make naturalistic claims; that the supernatural has real effects in the physical world, which of course puts it fully within the scope, and in conflict with, science. When challenged, they fall back to a position of pure spiritualism, in which the magical world has no measurable effect on the real world. Both claims are often made within the same speech or article, apparently with no awareness on the part of the claimant that they are contradicting themselves.
This maneuver, in fact, is so common that it may be more than a simple rhetorical ploy; it may represent a genuine state of confusion common to the minds of supernaturalists. The root cause appears to be a fond, even sentimental, attachment to the promise of magic as an escape from all strictures of necessity. At its core this is simply positive thinking with magical overtones, hope pure and simple but with no practical basis, no specified way to achieve that end. The utopian visions of the great totalitarian ideologies of the past century are examples of this; a great future awaits us, but it never arrives, nor even draws closer. Nevertheless, they claimed, we must press on. Hope itself is not nonsense, but here it is entirely devoid of the due diligence which would justify it. When disciplined by challenge supernaturalism retreats to this core position of optimism, but will, of its own accord, spill out into flights of pure fantasy which are nevertheless claimed to be real. The problem with supernaturalism is that its rationality is as porous as a sieve, symptomatic of mind so open as to have almost no walls. In practice, supernaturalists are like a car with a powerful engine but no steering or brakes; their optimism may allow them to go very far very fast, or hit a wall with equally impressive speed.
Practical\Empirical vs. Dogmatic: This is mistakenly regarded as the main rift in the atheist-believer divide. In fact, this is also a distinction between secular ideologues (Communists, for example) and secular realists, and between two forms of religion, one which relies on practice and primarily emotional experience, and the other which insists upon rote interpretations of sacred texts and authorities. The naturalistic or scientific world view, and the practical or mystical form of religion, both require more work and ability than dogmatism. In consideration of this someone like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris may have much more in common with a mystical practitioner than a run of the mill dogmatist. Dogmatism is a form of philosophical outsourcing, in which the believer delegates his or her thinking on at least some questions to authorities recognized as such within the believer's immediate peer group. The actual competence of these authorities is a question they do not consider, and having no competence in the area themselves, the followers of these authorities will be slow to entertain the idea that their shepherd is actually fleecing his flock. In some primarily practical religious traditions, dogma is recognized as an obstacle to enlightenment, an "idol of the mind" to be discarded.
It must be stressed, however, that religion is not the only source of dogma, and that forms of secular dogma just as dangerous are possible, which can share the religious element of the promised land or future paradise. Communism and National Socialism are two commonly cited examples. One of the more costly dogmas to emerge recently is related to Hegelianism. This is the dogma of inevitable progress, which holds that overturning corrupt regimes will necessarily result in the organic rise of justice and freedom, these being the product of the march of history. This is the guiding principle of many Marxists, including Che Guevera, and of the orginal neo-cons, who believed that all that needed to be done in Iraq was to topple Saddam Hussein and democracy would be the inevitable result. Still, secular dogmas are subject to rational scrutiny and refutation in a way that religious dogmas are not; the Communists and Nazis are discredited in a way to which even the most notorious religion seems immune. Secular dogmas promise results in this world, and as such are falsifiable. Religious dogmas ultimately promise results in an imaginary hidden world, of which nothing can ever be known.
Passionate\Engaged vs. Passive: Most believers--and most atheists--do not devote much time to the questions of what they believe or why. They simply don't care that much about it, so even the most outrageous dogmas are not likely to result in acts of violent fanaticism. They are too busy with other things. By contrast, fanatics, theologians, and any who consider the truth in these matters to be very important (pro or con) are passionate and engaged in the discussion, and are far more likely to act upon their beliefs. Again, the distinction exists within theistic and atheistic camps.
This raises several interesting points. First, when critics accuse the New Atheists of being as fundamentalist as the type of believer they attack, they are confusing passion with dogma. Second, it is worth noting that figures like Jesus, the Bhudda, and many of the Old Testament prophets were calling upon their fellow believers to engage passionately with their faith, usually at the expense of material concerns. Jesus' admonition to "take no thought for tomorrow", and Socrates claim that "the unexamined life is not worth living", are the words of men so fascinated with the questions of philosophy that mere personal material undertakings are of little interest or value--even concerns of survival. To the life of the mind, the rat race is no more than a distracting irritant. Their contempt is not for materialism in the scientific sense, but for economic materialism. Theirs is an ethic which is entirely lost in the decadent and denatured religion which is by far the most common form today, in which God favours the rich and wants you to aspire to be amongst them. The divine right of kings has been replaced with the divine right of wealth.
An interesting aside: there is a demographic that has the same disregard for economic materialism; the boffins, or the nerds. As one nerd friend put it, "I want to make enough money so that I never have to think about it again." Not, "enough so that I can have anything I want," because he didn't want that much. He just wanted the irritant of money to go away. There was a joke on Slashdot about how most nerds just make enough money so that their parents will stop bugging them about it. The Open Source movement is an expression of this revolt against materialism and towards the life of the mind. Jesus would be proud. But this attitude, and the drive and ability to make headway in the pursuit of truth, probably aren't things that can be taught.
Dogmas are heuristics, quick rules of thumb accepted by those without the time, ability, or inclination to do the research and work things out for themselves. No one, of course, can be an expert in everything. We specialize, and outsource expertise in most areas to other people, and most people outsource their spiritual concerns and even their moral judgement to those they consider specialists. Unfortunately the peer review process in religion is rather inadequate, because dogma exists in a bubble of human opinion, unsupported by evidence or reason. This allows the unscrupulous to exploit religion to build their own personal empire. Why is it that the likes of L. Ron Hubbard, Sun Myung Moon, and Peter Popoff are challenged only by people like of James Randi and investigative journalists, rather than their religious peers? It can only be that other religious authorities do not want a similar light to intrude upon their own activities. What I find outrageous is how many people with grand religious, economic, and political ambitions, those who have given in to the temptations laid out by Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, can persist in calling themselves Christians. Why bother with the pretense, but to limn raw greed with the gloss of sanctity?
Finally, the fact that many passive believers may hold, but not act upon, outrageously dogmatic beliefs, makes them non-symptomatic carriers of a potentially deadly condition. We are all familiar with stories of apparently normal, secular individuals who suddenly snap and become the most rigidly fetishistic believers imaginable (Stephen Baldwin comes to mind here.) What happens in these cases is that a common and usually benign disease suddenly manifests itself in its most malignant form. This is where Dawkins and Harris are right when they say that moderate believers provide support for fanatics. It is not necessarily that their beliefs are moderate, only the commitment, and therefore the effect, of those beliefs. Your happy-go-lucky church going neighbour may harbour beliefs which, if ignited with passion, would turn him into a frightening raving fanatic. And the spark for this passion may appear at any time, in a personal, economic, or political crisis. Passion is, after all, what the founders of all the religions intended amongst their followers, though they might often be disappointed with the expressions of that passion.
The Dali Lama said that the problem with most religious believers was that they didn't take their religion seriously enough, but taking dogma seriously can lead to disaster. What the Dalai Lama intends is that people take their religion seriously enough to grapple with it and move beyond dogma. Though taking it seriously might take care of inclination, it won't have much on an impact on ability, and the requirements of making a living may still impose serious limits on time. Neither of these were a problem for the Dalai Lama, of course, who was chosen as a monarch at a very early age and given nothing to do but study bhuddism. It may be of great benefit to us that most believers never take their religion very seriously, as the dogmatic form of religion may predominate anyway, and the calibre of religious leadership is generally abyssmal.
Dogmatism, however, is not what most of the religious founders intended--although I believe it is precisely what Mohammed had in mind; the very word Islam means Surrender, the unthinking acceptance of dogma. But you can still hear many of the others pulling their hair out in exasperation as their followers try to reduce a method down to a set of dogmatic propositions, rather than pursuing the method themselves. The ideal enlightened master doesn't tell you what to think at all, but he may tell you what not to think, because certain conclusions lead people to stop thinking altogether. The Bhudda (as an archetypal example) is trying to teach you how to think; once you can do that, you can reach your own conclusions. The parallel to the scientific method is direct and in no way accidental; in either case, the goal is truth, and I would argue that anyone who cannot understand science has no business expounding upon religion--no business at all. This same thread runs through the Judeo-Christian tradition, but finding it is not easy, because the scriptures are also littered with dogma. As a religious text, the Bible actually isn't very good.
I don't think they had much of a stake in supernaturalism either. These were simply the dominant explanations of their time, probably embroidered long after their deaths, and what kind of a hero would the messiah be if he couldn't perform miracles; even the ancient heroes could do that, according to legend. St. Augustine explicitly said that where scripture contradicted science, it was scripture that must give way. So, the position of the founders of most traditions (again, Islam is the notable exception) is Natural, Practical\Empirical, and Passionate\Engaged. Notice that this is also the position of the New Atheists. I have a variation on Clarke's Law which is apropos to this: "Any sufficiently advanced theology is indistinguishable from atheism."
Natural vs. Supernatural: This, I think, is the one closest to our hearts, with us as Naturalists in opposition to all forms of magical thinking, from the cheap tricks of Uri Geller and Sylvia Browne to miraculous interventions claimed by most religious believers. In fact, this distinction runs through both atheist and theistic camps; the Nazis and the Stalinists were notorious dabblers in the occult. Supernaturalists in full advance make naturalistic claims; that the supernatural has real effects in the physical world, which of course puts it fully within the scope, and in conflict with, science. When challenged, they fall back to a position of pure spiritualism, in which the magical world has no measurable effect on the real world. Both claims are often made within the same speech or article, apparently with no awareness on the part of the claimant that they are contradicting themselves.
This maneuver, in fact, is so common that it may be more than a simple rhetorical ploy; it may represent a genuine state of confusion common to the minds of supernaturalists. The root cause appears to be a fond, even sentimental, attachment to the promise of magic as an escape from all strictures of necessity. At its core this is simply positive thinking with magical overtones, hope pure and simple but with no practical basis, no specified way to achieve that end. The utopian visions of the great totalitarian ideologies of the past century are examples of this; a great future awaits us, but it never arrives, nor even draws closer. Nevertheless, they claimed, we must press on. Hope itself is not nonsense, but here it is entirely devoid of the due diligence which would justify it. When disciplined by challenge supernaturalism retreats to this core position of optimism, but will, of its own accord, spill out into flights of pure fantasy which are nevertheless claimed to be real. The problem with supernaturalism is that its rationality is as porous as a sieve, symptomatic of mind so open as to have almost no walls. In practice, supernaturalists are like a car with a powerful engine but no steering or brakes; their optimism may allow them to go very far very fast, or hit a wall with equally impressive speed.
Practical\Empirical vs. Dogmatic: This is mistakenly regarded as the main rift in the atheist-believer divide. In fact, this is also a distinction between secular ideologues (Communists, for example) and secular realists, and between two forms of religion, one which relies on practice and primarily emotional experience, and the other which insists upon rote interpretations of sacred texts and authorities. The naturalistic or scientific world view, and the practical or mystical form of religion, both require more work and ability than dogmatism. In consideration of this someone like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris may have much more in common with a mystical practitioner than a run of the mill dogmatist. Dogmatism is a form of philosophical outsourcing, in which the believer delegates his or her thinking on at least some questions to authorities recognized as such within the believer's immediate peer group. The actual competence of these authorities is a question they do not consider, and having no competence in the area themselves, the followers of these authorities will be slow to entertain the idea that their shepherd is actually fleecing his flock. In some primarily practical religious traditions, dogma is recognized as an obstacle to enlightenment, an "idol of the mind" to be discarded.
It must be stressed, however, that religion is not the only source of dogma, and that forms of secular dogma just as dangerous are possible, which can share the religious element of the promised land or future paradise. Communism and National Socialism are two commonly cited examples. One of the more costly dogmas to emerge recently is related to Hegelianism. This is the dogma of inevitable progress, which holds that overturning corrupt regimes will necessarily result in the organic rise of justice and freedom, these being the product of the march of history. This is the guiding principle of many Marxists, including Che Guevera, and of the orginal neo-cons, who believed that all that needed to be done in Iraq was to topple Saddam Hussein and democracy would be the inevitable result. Still, secular dogmas are subject to rational scrutiny and refutation in a way that religious dogmas are not; the Communists and Nazis are discredited in a way to which even the most notorious religion seems immune. Secular dogmas promise results in this world, and as such are falsifiable. Religious dogmas ultimately promise results in an imaginary hidden world, of which nothing can ever be known.
Passionate\Engaged vs. Passive: Most believers--and most atheists--do not devote much time to the questions of what they believe or why. They simply don't care that much about it, so even the most outrageous dogmas are not likely to result in acts of violent fanaticism. They are too busy with other things. By contrast, fanatics, theologians, and any who consider the truth in these matters to be very important (pro or con) are passionate and engaged in the discussion, and are far more likely to act upon their beliefs. Again, the distinction exists within theistic and atheistic camps.
This raises several interesting points. First, when critics accuse the New Atheists of being as fundamentalist as the type of believer they attack, they are confusing passion with dogma. Second, it is worth noting that figures like Jesus, the Bhudda, and many of the Old Testament prophets were calling upon their fellow believers to engage passionately with their faith, usually at the expense of material concerns. Jesus' admonition to "take no thought for tomorrow", and Socrates claim that "the unexamined life is not worth living", are the words of men so fascinated with the questions of philosophy that mere personal material undertakings are of little interest or value--even concerns of survival. To the life of the mind, the rat race is no more than a distracting irritant. Their contempt is not for materialism in the scientific sense, but for economic materialism. Theirs is an ethic which is entirely lost in the decadent and denatured religion which is by far the most common form today, in which God favours the rich and wants you to aspire to be amongst them. The divine right of kings has been replaced with the divine right of wealth.
An interesting aside: there is a demographic that has the same disregard for economic materialism; the boffins, or the nerds. As one nerd friend put it, "I want to make enough money so that I never have to think about it again." Not, "enough so that I can have anything I want," because he didn't want that much. He just wanted the irritant of money to go away. There was a joke on Slashdot about how most nerds just make enough money so that their parents will stop bugging them about it. The Open Source movement is an expression of this revolt against materialism and towards the life of the mind. Jesus would be proud. But this attitude, and the drive and ability to make headway in the pursuit of truth, probably aren't things that can be taught.
Dogmas are heuristics, quick rules of thumb accepted by those without the time, ability, or inclination to do the research and work things out for themselves. No one, of course, can be an expert in everything. We specialize, and outsource expertise in most areas to other people, and most people outsource their spiritual concerns and even their moral judgement to those they consider specialists. Unfortunately the peer review process in religion is rather inadequate, because dogma exists in a bubble of human opinion, unsupported by evidence or reason. This allows the unscrupulous to exploit religion to build their own personal empire. Why is it that the likes of L. Ron Hubbard, Sun Myung Moon, and Peter Popoff are challenged only by people like of James Randi and investigative journalists, rather than their religious peers? It can only be that other religious authorities do not want a similar light to intrude upon their own activities. What I find outrageous is how many people with grand religious, economic, and political ambitions, those who have given in to the temptations laid out by Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, can persist in calling themselves Christians. Why bother with the pretense, but to limn raw greed with the gloss of sanctity?
Finally, the fact that many passive believers may hold, but not act upon, outrageously dogmatic beliefs, makes them non-symptomatic carriers of a potentially deadly condition. We are all familiar with stories of apparently normal, secular individuals who suddenly snap and become the most rigidly fetishistic believers imaginable (Stephen Baldwin comes to mind here.) What happens in these cases is that a common and usually benign disease suddenly manifests itself in its most malignant form. This is where Dawkins and Harris are right when they say that moderate believers provide support for fanatics. It is not necessarily that their beliefs are moderate, only the commitment, and therefore the effect, of those beliefs. Your happy-go-lucky church going neighbour may harbour beliefs which, if ignited with passion, would turn him into a frightening raving fanatic. And the spark for this passion may appear at any time, in a personal, economic, or political crisis. Passion is, after all, what the founders of all the religions intended amongst their followers, though they might often be disappointed with the expressions of that passion.
The Dali Lama said that the problem with most religious believers was that they didn't take their religion seriously enough, but taking dogma seriously can lead to disaster. What the Dalai Lama intends is that people take their religion seriously enough to grapple with it and move beyond dogma. Though taking it seriously might take care of inclination, it won't have much on an impact on ability, and the requirements of making a living may still impose serious limits on time. Neither of these were a problem for the Dalai Lama, of course, who was chosen as a monarch at a very early age and given nothing to do but study bhuddism. It may be of great benefit to us that most believers never take their religion very seriously, as the dogmatic form of religion may predominate anyway, and the calibre of religious leadership is generally abyssmal.
Dogmatism, however, is not what most of the religious founders intended--although I believe it is precisely what Mohammed had in mind; the very word Islam means Surrender, the unthinking acceptance of dogma. But you can still hear many of the others pulling their hair out in exasperation as their followers try to reduce a method down to a set of dogmatic propositions, rather than pursuing the method themselves. The ideal enlightened master doesn't tell you what to think at all, but he may tell you what not to think, because certain conclusions lead people to stop thinking altogether. The Bhudda (as an archetypal example) is trying to teach you how to think; once you can do that, you can reach your own conclusions. The parallel to the scientific method is direct and in no way accidental; in either case, the goal is truth, and I would argue that anyone who cannot understand science has no business expounding upon religion--no business at all. This same thread runs through the Judeo-Christian tradition, but finding it is not easy, because the scriptures are also littered with dogma. As a religious text, the Bible actually isn't very good.
I don't think they had much of a stake in supernaturalism either. These were simply the dominant explanations of their time, probably embroidered long after their deaths, and what kind of a hero would the messiah be if he couldn't perform miracles; even the ancient heroes could do that, according to legend. St. Augustine explicitly said that where scripture contradicted science, it was scripture that must give way. So, the position of the founders of most traditions (again, Islam is the notable exception) is Natural, Practical\Empirical, and Passionate\Engaged. Notice that this is also the position of the New Atheists. I have a variation on Clarke's Law which is apropos to this: "Any sufficiently advanced theology is indistinguishable from atheism."
Sunday, November 11, 2007
From Marcus in Afghanistan
This is a letter from my friend Marcus in Afghanistan. I think it's a good one, so I'm posting it here.
_____________________________________________________
This year, I celebrated Remembrance Day in Afghanistan. We gathered outside our headquarters, near a cenotaph erected to all of our comrades who fell in Afghanistan, and received the families of some of the guys who got killed recently.
There were also representatives of the RCMP, Government of Canada, and the government of Afghanistan. But most importantly, a platoon of Afghan National Army (ANA) guys, along with some senior commanders showed up.
The service was predominantly in English and French; only for certain points, did they offer a translation into Dari or Pashtu (I'm not sure which one it was, I assume Pashtu but I'm not certain). They had prayers for the fallen, given by one of our Padres, and translated into Pashtu.
Personally, I thought it was a nice gesture to invite the Afghans, but it was an opportunity missed. We spent the entire ceremony honouring the Canadians who fell in combat, but only mentioned in passing the Afghan soldiers who died. This was a mistake.
I can say without a doubt in my mind that the ANA pays a steeper price in blood than anybody else in theatre (other than the Taliban of course). Some of their senior officers and NCOs fought the Soviets, and those that were too young (which would have been under 14 at the time) still fought in the civil war before the Taliban came to power... Others still fought the Taliban throughout their regime.
The Operations and Mentoring Liaison Team (OMLT) are here teaching the ANA. They aren't here teaching these guys how to kill; honestly, they have more experience at it than we do. Nor are we here to teach them how to cope with losses; they've done more dying than we ever will here in theatre. We're here to teach them discipline, professionalism, restraint, administration, intelligence and logistics. And from what I saw, they're learning especially well.
But, the fact remains that they've been fighting here for longer than we have, have lost more men than we have (or will), and will be protecting the Afghan people long after we're gone. Thus, it was rather embarrassing to listen to our padres drone on about Canadian sacrifice, while in the corner of my eye I could see men who had lost far more friends and family in battle, who have breathed more of the bitter stink of war than us.
We laid 10 wreaths in our ceremony; the families of a number of dead Canadians laid some, as did some senior Canadian officers, the Kandahar Chief of Police, an ANA Brigade Commander, and the provincial Governor of Kandahar. What were these men thinking about when they were planting wreaths for dead Canadians, while behind them in the parade were the battle weary Afghan soldiers, clad in their dark green forest camouflage uniforms and their old, rattling AK-47s? What did they think of us, standing there with our desert camouflage and our high-tech rifles with optical scopes? What did they think, knowing that some of our force was on their "HLTA", a paid vacation to Canada, Thailand, Europe, or any other locale? What did they think, knowing that our risk and hardship bonuses alone could probably outfit an entire ANA battalion with decent uniforms and effective body-armour? What do their soldiers think when they arrived for the ceremony in the back of pickup trucks, driving past our LAV-IIIs and Nayala mine-proof armoured vehicles?
I don't mean to insinuate that they don't appreciate the contribution of Canadians; they certainly do. But we get so wrapped up in ourselves, that we forget their contribution, which I would argue is easily an order of magnitude greater than our own in terms of blood. Canadians at home are slowly becoming more cognizant of our own sacrifices, but remain woefully ignorant of the Afghans'.
Not only that, but I know that my family is safe while I am here in Afghanistan. The same cannot be said of an ANA soldier, or Afghan National Police officer. What do the Taliban do to families of "collaborators" when they can find them? Before Canadians deploy, we have to visit a social worker to ensure that our personal lives are stable, so that issues or problems at home won't distract us when in combat. The Afghan National Army has no such luxury.
I understand that November 11th is Remembrance Day for Canadians and the Commonwealth; it's our day, and perhaps the Afghans have their own day to remember their losses. But I think that having invited them to participate in our ceremonies, we should have given more credit to their sacrifices. In the end, I appreciate that they were truly gracious and professional in the face of our oversight, sharing our ceremony with us in quiet dignity. They visibly honoured our commitment and sacrifice, while silently reflecting on their own. These guys impress me more and more each day.
Marcus
_____________________________________________________
This year, I celebrated Remembrance Day in Afghanistan. We gathered outside our headquarters, near a cenotaph erected to all of our comrades who fell in Afghanistan, and received the families of some of the guys who got killed recently.
There were also representatives of the RCMP, Government of Canada, and the government of Afghanistan. But most importantly, a platoon of Afghan National Army (ANA) guys, along with some senior commanders showed up.
The service was predominantly in English and French; only for certain points, did they offer a translation into Dari or Pashtu (I'm not sure which one it was, I assume Pashtu but I'm not certain). They had prayers for the fallen, given by one of our Padres, and translated into Pashtu.
Personally, I thought it was a nice gesture to invite the Afghans, but it was an opportunity missed. We spent the entire ceremony honouring the Canadians who fell in combat, but only mentioned in passing the Afghan soldiers who died. This was a mistake.
I can say without a doubt in my mind that the ANA pays a steeper price in blood than anybody else in theatre (other than the Taliban of course). Some of their senior officers and NCOs fought the Soviets, and those that were too young (which would have been under 14 at the time) still fought in the civil war before the Taliban came to power... Others still fought the Taliban throughout their regime.
The Operations and Mentoring Liaison Team (OMLT) are here teaching the ANA. They aren't here teaching these guys how to kill; honestly, they have more experience at it than we do. Nor are we here to teach them how to cope with losses; they've done more dying than we ever will here in theatre. We're here to teach them discipline, professionalism, restraint, administration, intelligence and logistics. And from what I saw, they're learning especially well.
But, the fact remains that they've been fighting here for longer than we have, have lost more men than we have (or will), and will be protecting the Afghan people long after we're gone. Thus, it was rather embarrassing to listen to our padres drone on about Canadian sacrifice, while in the corner of my eye I could see men who had lost far more friends and family in battle, who have breathed more of the bitter stink of war than us.
We laid 10 wreaths in our ceremony; the families of a number of dead Canadians laid some, as did some senior Canadian officers, the Kandahar Chief of Police, an ANA Brigade Commander, and the provincial Governor of Kandahar. What were these men thinking about when they were planting wreaths for dead Canadians, while behind them in the parade were the battle weary Afghan soldiers, clad in their dark green forest camouflage uniforms and their old, rattling AK-47s? What did they think of us, standing there with our desert camouflage and our high-tech rifles with optical scopes? What did they think, knowing that some of our force was on their "HLTA", a paid vacation to Canada, Thailand, Europe, or any other locale? What did they think, knowing that our risk and hardship bonuses alone could probably outfit an entire ANA battalion with decent uniforms and effective body-armour? What do their soldiers think when they arrived for the ceremony in the back of pickup trucks, driving past our LAV-IIIs and Nayala mine-proof armoured vehicles?
I don't mean to insinuate that they don't appreciate the contribution of Canadians; they certainly do. But we get so wrapped up in ourselves, that we forget their contribution, which I would argue is easily an order of magnitude greater than our own in terms of blood. Canadians at home are slowly becoming more cognizant of our own sacrifices, but remain woefully ignorant of the Afghans'.
Not only that, but I know that my family is safe while I am here in Afghanistan. The same cannot be said of an ANA soldier, or Afghan National Police officer. What do the Taliban do to families of "collaborators" when they can find them? Before Canadians deploy, we have to visit a social worker to ensure that our personal lives are stable, so that issues or problems at home won't distract us when in combat. The Afghan National Army has no such luxury.
I understand that November 11th is Remembrance Day for Canadians and the Commonwealth; it's our day, and perhaps the Afghans have their own day to remember their losses. But I think that having invited them to participate in our ceremonies, we should have given more credit to their sacrifices. In the end, I appreciate that they were truly gracious and professional in the face of our oversight, sharing our ceremony with us in quiet dignity. They visibly honoured our commitment and sacrifice, while silently reflecting on their own. These guys impress me more and more each day.
Marcus
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Transcendentalization and Idolatry
Yesterday I caught Alistair McGrath on Big Ideas. In his attack on Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, he over emphasized minor arguments (religion as fairy tale, religion as memetic virus), and completely avoided Dawkins' strongest argument; the teapot argument of Bertrand Russell. This argument rests on the burden of proof: any ontological claim, any claim for the existence of a thing, requires evidence to establish that claim as worthy of consideration. Unicorns, fairies, or the invisible teapot could exist somewhere--one simply cannot disprove with absolute certainty the existence of anything. Yet we take it as a given that these things do not exist. In the absence of evidence, the claim is considered false by default. The burden of proof rests upon theists, not upon atheists. Theists must deliver proof, or stop making ontological claims.
But McGrath did have a big idea, though he didn't recognize it as such. It was less something he argued, and more something he stepped in, and which is still stuck to his shoe. This was the idea of transcendentalization, the elevation of a certain ideas, principles, or dogmas to a higher plane where they are immune from challenge or criticism. He was attempting to use this as ammunition against secular ideas, but this idea has the strongest relevance when applied to religion itself. He had given the game away, and did not seem to realize it.
Transcendentalization is something which demagogues and ideologues do with monotonous regularity; they cling to a fixed idea, even a buzz word, and use it as the standard by which all else must be judged, but which itself must never be questioned. A personal prejudice is exalted to supernatural heights, pinned upon the stars, beyond the reach of all naysayers. It becomes a sacred object. This is not unique to religion; political ideologies in the twentieth century used this to great effect, and you can still see the trick done on a daily basis by lowbrow political pundits. Do this in science, though, and you can expect to be mauled savagely. Sigmund Freud escaped evisceration for so long only because he existed in a vacuum. A viable scientific alternative, cognitive psychology, had to wait for the invention of computer science. But in religion, there is another word for transcendentalization: idolatry.
Idolatry is usually misconstrued as the worship of physical objects or images. But an image can be made of words, of ideas. An idol can be the book that carries those words, or the person who spoke them. The subject of those words is always the same: some transcendent Idea or Being which is beyond question and demands unconditional acceptance and obedience. To the extent that you attempt to describe such a being--even attempt to talk about it at all--you are engaging in idolatry. And yet, the essential aim of most theology, and of theism is general, is to describe the character and attributes of that Being, to create an image of it as an object of worship for believers.
Here again is the distinction between cataphatic and apophatic theology. Cataphatic theology attempts to describe what God is. Apophatic theology insists that you cannot describe God at all, only describe what God is not. One can only refer to subjective experience, which do not necessarily pertain to any ontological reality--and even the nature of these experiences cannot properly be described by any means of communication. Expressions of apophatic theology are often cryptic (Wittgenstein's "Whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent"), or simple statements of humility and ignorance (Socrates' "All I know is that I know nothing.") Expressions of the ineffable experience often seem trite and even obvious, conveying something of the character of the experience but none of its power, or are poetic and powerful but indecipherable to those who have not had such an experience.
This represents a line drawn between two types of religion. One talks about experiences and practices, but makes no ontological claims. Indeed, they would maintain further that ontological claims are serious obstacles on the path of transformation: "idols of the mind" that must be "killed".Adherents may pray and receive answers, but they make no claims regarding the source of those answers; they may come from another source, or simply from a deeper reserve of wisdom within oneself. But where those answers come from doesn't matter. All that matters is the benefit of the experience. These people can never be in conflict with any scientific fact or principle, because they do not make claims about the world at all, only about their experiences and attitudes towards the world. In fact, they are not 'believers' at all, but practitioners. Stephen Jay Gould's claim that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria is based upon the mistaken notion that this is the only type of religion. There is still the question of how common this is amongst those who claim to be religious, but if all religious adherents were of this category, no dispute between science and religion would ever arise.
The other type of religion dispenses articles of dogma, hard and fast rules founded upon ontological claims concerning the nature of God and his actions within the world. The language employed is descriptive; these are claims of fact, rather than descriptions of experience. These claims bring them almost entirely within the reach of science, and so they find themselves bearing the burden of proof regarding their claims, which remain unsubstantiated and against which mountains of evidence continue to accumulate. Finding themselves at odds with what is known to be true about the world, these believers have taken it upon themselves to undermine science itself. Having found themselves to be wrong, they would prefer to abolish the truth rather and humble themselves and accept it. Built upon received wisdom rather than personal experience, it even seeks to commandeer spiritual experiences to its own ends, and stifles creativity, which would lead its followers to different opinions than those handed down.
It should be immediately obvious that this second type of religion is profoundly degenerate; steeped in idolatry, at war with the truth, inimical to creativity (the one trait in which we could be considered to be made in God's image), and even unfriendly towards genuine religious experiences. And yet, this is the very form of religion which is the primary target of secularists, atheists, and rationalists. Sam Harris has even gone to great lengths to distinguish between spiritual practices and dogmatic religion. It turns out that the very thing that atheists despise is also the ancient enemy of the prophets; the elevation of a belief to the status of unquestionable authority, to which even the truth must be sacrificed. For if theism is the belief that God exists and interacts with the universe, it inevitably leads to, and indeed requires, a description of that interaction and therefore of the God itself. Theism makes an ontological claim with real world consequences, which it must justify, and any attempt towards such a justification inevitably leads to some form of idolatry. The only escape from this practice is to be, in some sense, an atheist.
Deism, by contrast, holds that there is or was some form of deity, but that it does not interact with the world. This requires no attempt to describe God--and in fact, strongly discourages it, since any such being would lay beyond the categories of thought. But since it removes God from the world and denies the primary claim of theism, it is largely indistiguishable from atheism, and deists have always sided with atheists against dogmatists (and have always been regarded as atheists by believers.)
It might seem to be a stretch to claim that the Judeo-Christian tradition, if properly followed, will eventually lead you to a position of atheism (or one so close to it to be virtually identical.) Christianity has, after all, a major stumbling block--the idolatry of Jesus himself (most likely the primary reason that the Jews rejected Christianity.) Islam is another matter altogether--the entire faith is a cult of personality. And yet, consider the Ten Commandments, which some American judges now seem to be so fond of displaying on public property. They may display it, but I don't think they have any idea of where they really lead. The first three are different formulations of the ban on idolatry.
When the Romans first gained entry into the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem and found it empty, they assumed that the Jews were atheists. What does it mean to worship no other Gods, when you are not even allowed to depict or describe the one God that you do worship? It means that the throne of God is empty, and for all intents and purposes, it must remain so. The second commandment reinforces this in a ban against worshipping graven images--but as we've already seen, an image can be depicted in words as well as in stone or gold. The third, against using the name of God, revolves around an old principle of magic: to know the name of a thing is to understand it and even to be able to command it. Politicians and ministers--and the very judges who want to hang old tablets in their court houses--routinely violate this commandment by invoking God's name to justify their own pronouncements and policies. So: you can't describe God, you can't imagine or depict him in any way, and you can't even name him. What's left? You have to plead ignorance and let it go at that. As Socrates said, "All I know is that I know nothing." And Socrates was condemned to death on the charge of atheism.
The history of Christianity can be seen as a long series of emetic responses to this internal toxin. Unfortunately, idolatry is too well suited to the purposes of authoritarian hierarchies for Christian churches to resist it for long. Idolatry is the very essence of any cult, and cults are notorious cash and status cows for anyone ruthless enough to exploit them. Even those with the best intentions will find themselves pulled off course by slow and minor degrees as they accomodate themselves to this convenience. Reform can only come from outside; those who attempt to reform these institution from inside will soon find themselves thrown out anyway.
Our moderate religions in the West are the product of secular states, states which reigned in the worst excesses of religious power and insisted that the various sects and faiths live together in an orderly manner. In an attempt to throw off the yoke of secularism, some extreme Christian sects in America have transformed themselves into a broad based political movement. This has achieved some success, but at a devastating cost to the faith itself. The result is a religion of sound-bite dogmas but with no soul. America exports this style of religion as an imperial project ventured upon by some of its citizens, just as Saudi Arabia exports an equally soulless and dogmatic form of Islam for the same purpose. Both fall on the ground like salt, and little grows in their wake.
If either of these religions are to be saved, their salvation will have to come from outside; the sclerotic effect of these movements is too advanced for these religions to innovate from within, as even many moderate churches and mosques have been infiltrated and hollowed out (and many ex-Muslims claim that moderate Islam is a contradiction in terms in any case.) This outside help will come from rational practitioners and atheists, who will have to cut off these tumors. But it may be that the original tree is dead and must be abandoned. In that case, seedlings may survive, but they will look nothing like the diseased forms that these religions now take.
But McGrath did have a big idea, though he didn't recognize it as such. It was less something he argued, and more something he stepped in, and which is still stuck to his shoe. This was the idea of transcendentalization, the elevation of a certain ideas, principles, or dogmas to a higher plane where they are immune from challenge or criticism. He was attempting to use this as ammunition against secular ideas, but this idea has the strongest relevance when applied to religion itself. He had given the game away, and did not seem to realize it.
Transcendentalization is something which demagogues and ideologues do with monotonous regularity; they cling to a fixed idea, even a buzz word, and use it as the standard by which all else must be judged, but which itself must never be questioned. A personal prejudice is exalted to supernatural heights, pinned upon the stars, beyond the reach of all naysayers. It becomes a sacred object. This is not unique to religion; political ideologies in the twentieth century used this to great effect, and you can still see the trick done on a daily basis by lowbrow political pundits. Do this in science, though, and you can expect to be mauled savagely. Sigmund Freud escaped evisceration for so long only because he existed in a vacuum. A viable scientific alternative, cognitive psychology, had to wait for the invention of computer science. But in religion, there is another word for transcendentalization: idolatry.
Idolatry is usually misconstrued as the worship of physical objects or images. But an image can be made of words, of ideas. An idol can be the book that carries those words, or the person who spoke them. The subject of those words is always the same: some transcendent Idea or Being which is beyond question and demands unconditional acceptance and obedience. To the extent that you attempt to describe such a being--even attempt to talk about it at all--you are engaging in idolatry. And yet, the essential aim of most theology, and of theism is general, is to describe the character and attributes of that Being, to create an image of it as an object of worship for believers.
Here again is the distinction between cataphatic and apophatic theology. Cataphatic theology attempts to describe what God is. Apophatic theology insists that you cannot describe God at all, only describe what God is not. One can only refer to subjective experience, which do not necessarily pertain to any ontological reality--and even the nature of these experiences cannot properly be described by any means of communication. Expressions of apophatic theology are often cryptic (Wittgenstein's "Whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent"), or simple statements of humility and ignorance (Socrates' "All I know is that I know nothing.") Expressions of the ineffable experience often seem trite and even obvious, conveying something of the character of the experience but none of its power, or are poetic and powerful but indecipherable to those who have not had such an experience.
This represents a line drawn between two types of religion. One talks about experiences and practices, but makes no ontological claims. Indeed, they would maintain further that ontological claims are serious obstacles on the path of transformation: "idols of the mind" that must be "killed".Adherents may pray and receive answers, but they make no claims regarding the source of those answers; they may come from another source, or simply from a deeper reserve of wisdom within oneself. But where those answers come from doesn't matter. All that matters is the benefit of the experience. These people can never be in conflict with any scientific fact or principle, because they do not make claims about the world at all, only about their experiences and attitudes towards the world. In fact, they are not 'believers' at all, but practitioners. Stephen Jay Gould's claim that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria is based upon the mistaken notion that this is the only type of religion. There is still the question of how common this is amongst those who claim to be religious, but if all religious adherents were of this category, no dispute between science and religion would ever arise.
The other type of religion dispenses articles of dogma, hard and fast rules founded upon ontological claims concerning the nature of God and his actions within the world. The language employed is descriptive; these are claims of fact, rather than descriptions of experience. These claims bring them almost entirely within the reach of science, and so they find themselves bearing the burden of proof regarding their claims, which remain unsubstantiated and against which mountains of evidence continue to accumulate. Finding themselves at odds with what is known to be true about the world, these believers have taken it upon themselves to undermine science itself. Having found themselves to be wrong, they would prefer to abolish the truth rather and humble themselves and accept it. Built upon received wisdom rather than personal experience, it even seeks to commandeer spiritual experiences to its own ends, and stifles creativity, which would lead its followers to different opinions than those handed down.
It should be immediately obvious that this second type of religion is profoundly degenerate; steeped in idolatry, at war with the truth, inimical to creativity (the one trait in which we could be considered to be made in God's image), and even unfriendly towards genuine religious experiences. And yet, this is the very form of religion which is the primary target of secularists, atheists, and rationalists. Sam Harris has even gone to great lengths to distinguish between spiritual practices and dogmatic religion. It turns out that the very thing that atheists despise is also the ancient enemy of the prophets; the elevation of a belief to the status of unquestionable authority, to which even the truth must be sacrificed. For if theism is the belief that God exists and interacts with the universe, it inevitably leads to, and indeed requires, a description of that interaction and therefore of the God itself. Theism makes an ontological claim with real world consequences, which it must justify, and any attempt towards such a justification inevitably leads to some form of idolatry. The only escape from this practice is to be, in some sense, an atheist.
Deism, by contrast, holds that there is or was some form of deity, but that it does not interact with the world. This requires no attempt to describe God--and in fact, strongly discourages it, since any such being would lay beyond the categories of thought. But since it removes God from the world and denies the primary claim of theism, it is largely indistiguishable from atheism, and deists have always sided with atheists against dogmatists (and have always been regarded as atheists by believers.)
It might seem to be a stretch to claim that the Judeo-Christian tradition, if properly followed, will eventually lead you to a position of atheism (or one so close to it to be virtually identical.) Christianity has, after all, a major stumbling block--the idolatry of Jesus himself (most likely the primary reason that the Jews rejected Christianity.) Islam is another matter altogether--the entire faith is a cult of personality. And yet, consider the Ten Commandments, which some American judges now seem to be so fond of displaying on public property. They may display it, but I don't think they have any idea of where they really lead. The first three are different formulations of the ban on idolatry.
When the Romans first gained entry into the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem and found it empty, they assumed that the Jews were atheists. What does it mean to worship no other Gods, when you are not even allowed to depict or describe the one God that you do worship? It means that the throne of God is empty, and for all intents and purposes, it must remain so. The second commandment reinforces this in a ban against worshipping graven images--but as we've already seen, an image can be depicted in words as well as in stone or gold. The third, against using the name of God, revolves around an old principle of magic: to know the name of a thing is to understand it and even to be able to command it. Politicians and ministers--and the very judges who want to hang old tablets in their court houses--routinely violate this commandment by invoking God's name to justify their own pronouncements and policies. So: you can't describe God, you can't imagine or depict him in any way, and you can't even name him. What's left? You have to plead ignorance and let it go at that. As Socrates said, "All I know is that I know nothing." And Socrates was condemned to death on the charge of atheism.
The history of Christianity can be seen as a long series of emetic responses to this internal toxin. Unfortunately, idolatry is too well suited to the purposes of authoritarian hierarchies for Christian churches to resist it for long. Idolatry is the very essence of any cult, and cults are notorious cash and status cows for anyone ruthless enough to exploit them. Even those with the best intentions will find themselves pulled off course by slow and minor degrees as they accomodate themselves to this convenience. Reform can only come from outside; those who attempt to reform these institution from inside will soon find themselves thrown out anyway.
Our moderate religions in the West are the product of secular states, states which reigned in the worst excesses of religious power and insisted that the various sects and faiths live together in an orderly manner. In an attempt to throw off the yoke of secularism, some extreme Christian sects in America have transformed themselves into a broad based political movement. This has achieved some success, but at a devastating cost to the faith itself. The result is a religion of sound-bite dogmas but with no soul. America exports this style of religion as an imperial project ventured upon by some of its citizens, just as Saudi Arabia exports an equally soulless and dogmatic form of Islam for the same purpose. Both fall on the ground like salt, and little grows in their wake.
If either of these religions are to be saved, their salvation will have to come from outside; the sclerotic effect of these movements is too advanced for these religions to innovate from within, as even many moderate churches and mosques have been infiltrated and hollowed out (and many ex-Muslims claim that moderate Islam is a contradiction in terms in any case.) This outside help will come from rational practitioners and atheists, who will have to cut off these tumors. But it may be that the original tree is dead and must be abandoned. In that case, seedlings may survive, but they will look nothing like the diseased forms that these religions now take.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Memes and Characters
In attacks on the theory of memes, the most common argument is the "Chinese telephone scenario" in which a line of people are given a statement and asked to pass it along the line. By the end of the line, the message is completely garbled--suggested proof that there can be such thing as a meme because memes do not transmit with any fidelity.
But a simple declarative statement is not analogous to a virus, it is analogous to a single strand of DNA. Viruses are not just free floating strands of DNA. They are single celled organisms, barely viable without the medium of other cells which they hijack and use to reproduce themselves. But they are, themselves, very simple cells. A meme would have to be a package. That package could contain multiple ideas, but the meme itself would be the delivery system.
What would such a delivery system look like, when the target is a human mind?
In A Devil's Chaplain, Richard Dawkins mentions a girl who had, via her parents, assimilated the mannerisms of Ludwig Wittgenstein. We are all composites of the people we admire. Earlier generations emulate their heroes, and we emulate them, and so on. The dead live on through us--but the dead are not the only ones that we take into ourselves. Living friends, and imaginary friends, become part of us. Even the characters of fiction become advisors, personalities who take on a new life in our imaginations. Like Woody Allen's character in Zelig, we take on the mannerisms and opinions of those around us, particularly those we love.
A meme is not a simple disconnected idea. Like the person it infects, a meme has a mind, a set of attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs. Memes are not simple ideas; they must be formed as characters, thumbnail sketches of personalities. They are living things that nonetheless only fully come to life by being hosted by others. The mechanism itself is usually positive. We emulate what we admire. The trick, in perpetuating a meme, is to get the person to admire someone. Once that is done, the adopted hero enters the mind of the converted, carrying along whatever ideas are associated with that character.
This is the job of religious proselytizers--to sell you the character. Once they have done that, they can fill in the detail of the character, by telling you stories about what the character did and said. The character becomes a permanent fixture of you mental landscape. The question "What would Jesus do?" is a hallmark of this process. Christians keep the character of Jesus in their heads, where he becomes a living continual companion. But the personality of that character is determined by the sect you belong to.
There is still a problem of fidelity, but the name of the character is usually assumed by each devotee to represent the same conception, and so a broad based alliance can be formed if fellow believers do not inquire too deeply. Fidelity within each sect is enforced by orthodoxy, a constant reiteration of what that character approves and disdains. Acceptance of the central figure facilitates an open door to personal attitudes, as the central figure can be 'reprogrammed' at will. As such, the religious memetic virus is a trojan, a back door into the mind of the believer, breaching personal judgement to permit external access to personal beliefs without challenge.
All widely successful religions are essentially cults of personality; at the center is a single authoritative figure who expresses the fundamental tenants of the cult; Jesus in Christianity, Mohammend in Islam, Yawheh in Judaism, the Bhuddha in Bhuddaism, and so on. Religions without a central figure survive more by tradition or individual choice than conversion. Their memetic potential is quite limited.
But a simple declarative statement is not analogous to a virus, it is analogous to a single strand of DNA. Viruses are not just free floating strands of DNA. They are single celled organisms, barely viable without the medium of other cells which they hijack and use to reproduce themselves. But they are, themselves, very simple cells. A meme would have to be a package. That package could contain multiple ideas, but the meme itself would be the delivery system.
What would such a delivery system look like, when the target is a human mind?
In A Devil's Chaplain, Richard Dawkins mentions a girl who had, via her parents, assimilated the mannerisms of Ludwig Wittgenstein. We are all composites of the people we admire. Earlier generations emulate their heroes, and we emulate them, and so on. The dead live on through us--but the dead are not the only ones that we take into ourselves. Living friends, and imaginary friends, become part of us. Even the characters of fiction become advisors, personalities who take on a new life in our imaginations. Like Woody Allen's character in Zelig, we take on the mannerisms and opinions of those around us, particularly those we love.
A meme is not a simple disconnected idea. Like the person it infects, a meme has a mind, a set of attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs. Memes are not simple ideas; they must be formed as characters, thumbnail sketches of personalities. They are living things that nonetheless only fully come to life by being hosted by others. The mechanism itself is usually positive. We emulate what we admire. The trick, in perpetuating a meme, is to get the person to admire someone. Once that is done, the adopted hero enters the mind of the converted, carrying along whatever ideas are associated with that character.
This is the job of religious proselytizers--to sell you the character. Once they have done that, they can fill in the detail of the character, by telling you stories about what the character did and said. The character becomes a permanent fixture of you mental landscape. The question "What would Jesus do?" is a hallmark of this process. Christians keep the character of Jesus in their heads, where he becomes a living continual companion. But the personality of that character is determined by the sect you belong to.
There is still a problem of fidelity, but the name of the character is usually assumed by each devotee to represent the same conception, and so a broad based alliance can be formed if fellow believers do not inquire too deeply. Fidelity within each sect is enforced by orthodoxy, a constant reiteration of what that character approves and disdains. Acceptance of the central figure facilitates an open door to personal attitudes, as the central figure can be 'reprogrammed' at will. As such, the religious memetic virus is a trojan, a back door into the mind of the believer, breaching personal judgement to permit external access to personal beliefs without challenge.
All widely successful religions are essentially cults of personality; at the center is a single authoritative figure who expresses the fundamental tenants of the cult; Jesus in Christianity, Mohammend in Islam, Yawheh in Judaism, the Bhuddha in Bhuddaism, and so on. Religions without a central figure survive more by tradition or individual choice than conversion. Their memetic potential is quite limited.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Postmodernism and Mediocrity
The disparity in intelligence amongst various members of the human race is one of the most disappointing facts that intellectuals, particularly left-leaning intellectuals, have to contend with. It is so disheartening that many on the left would like to deny that it even exists; they put this disparity down to lack of opportunity or education, poverty, or poor self-esteem. Or they invent a variety of other "intelligences". This is curious, by the way, given that so many condemn intellectuals for their arrogance, when in fact the fondest wish of many intellectuals is that they are no smarter than anyone else. Yet low intelligence is usually of dire consequence, unless it is openly admitted to be the case by all concerned, including those afflicted with it. This may be why the genuinely retarded may actually fare better than those of marginal capacity. We make allowances for the retarded, but those near the borderline are expected to play on an open field, and they get mauled.
Not understanding how the world works, they fail to grasp even the connections between their own actions and the consequences. Theodore Dalyrymple notes despairingly the use of the passive voice by common criminals. "I'm sorry for what happened," they say, as if they had nothing to do with it. The criminal act in question is often a spontaneous explosion of violence, or an impetuous act, which they felt they had no control over given the circumstances. As Phillip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment proves, circumstances can make monsters of us all. But with a certain competence in life comes the ability to avoid such hair trigger circumstances--to forsee the ends of a certain course and turn aside before it goes too far.
I'm happy to admit that a well developed facility for empathy seems to be somewhat independent of raw cognitive ability, and that this alone is sufficient to prevent the worst excesses that may result from poor rational judgement. But even this can go only so far; you can still do the wrong thing for the right reason. Doing the right thing requires understanding the situation.
In a conversation with my friend Pat, he pointed out that for religious believers below a certain threshold of intelligence, God is just some big friend in the sky who does stuff for them. Interesting: below a certain level of intelligence, religion is just magic--but then, so is science and technology. But this may also explain much about the rise of postmodernism. Originally a critique of dominant ideas which might skew or limit certain fields of inquiry, postmodernism quickly devolved into a blanket claim that everything was hocus pocus, the imposition of the will of the powerful on the weaker, which somehow charms or curses them into doing the bidding of their masters. Note the terminology--the imposition of will is also a common thread in magic. "As I will it, so mote it be." I suspect that postmodernism is in fact due to the influx of mediocre minds into academia, for whom nothing is comprehensible and so everything is a trick. They don't understand how anything could be true because they cannot see how anyone could figure out a way to establish the truth.
This may have happened as early as the late 19th century, as science became arcane enough that it took dedicated study to understand how it worked. I'm talking about Nietzsche here, who was the first to declare that science was the imposition of the views of a particular social faction (the slave mentality) upon the rest. One of the reasons that Nietzschians cannot recover morality from the ash heap of nihilism is that they reject reason as well as empathy; they don't understand the world, or the people who live in it. I have always sensed in Nietzsche an overcompensation--he talks about the over-man, but he himself was anything but. It reminds me over a rather pathetic book that came out in the 80's, Power sits at another table and observations on the business of power, written, as the very title admits, by a man so marginal that no one of any significance would even sit next to him. The very title drips with a fawning admiration for influential people, but no acquaintance or understanding of them. This man wanted to write about them, but he didn't understand them at all. It was all charisma, all shadow and appearance, signs and portents--all magic.
Nietzsche's disdain for the ethic of compassion, reason, science, and any form of morality appears to be the first postmodern attempt to move the goalposts, to create a fictitious standard of merit that one already meets, or to abandon all standards and so abandon the effort. It is one thing to say that the dominant religions are outdated and need to be fixed or replaced. It is another thing to throw everything out and replace it with a wisp of a fantasy. The ubermensch is often translated as the Superman, and it's no accident that this is also the name of a comic book character. Nietsche neither experienced power nor understood it. The nobility of old, whom he took as the model of his ideal man, themselves aspired to a model of justice, one which they invented. It was never foisted upon them by their slaves--who, even by Nietzsche's logic, never had the power to do so. That ideal was weak by our standards--it did, after all, include slavery itself, and the practice of slavery probably contributed more to undermining the ancient nobility than any mere philosophy. England's abandonment of the practice forced them to invent new ways of creating wealth, and made them a great empire. America's abolishment of slavery had the same effect. The fact is that the strong attain their position through forming alliances with others, by being good managers, and by dealing at least fairly enough that others would deal with them. They did not do it by simple fiat of will. Subservience makes slaves of everyone, even the masters.
What is The Secret but a dime-store repackaging of Nietzsche's Will to Power? The very term, Will to Power, is a magical invocation, more at home in the Magick of Aleister Crowley than in a work of philosophy. It is fond hope that the simple invocation of firmly held belief will somehow lead to the ends dreamed of. Ayn Rand does the same thing. Somehow, her character Roark's buildings apparently rise fully constructed out of his mind--the people who pay for them, build them, live in them, and work in them, don't seem to exist. Frank Lloyd Wright was great because he considered all these people. Roark would have been an abysmal failure as an architect.
I think that's why Nietzsche went catatonic--not because of the syphilis, or even from cosmic despair, but because he crashed when he realized that all he ever wanted to be was the over-man, and he never would be (his last book, Ecce Homo, was a raving proclamation of his own genius--something by then that I suspect he had lost all confidence in.) His despair was personal. And to anyone like him, who wants the claim that all of this stuff--science, truth, compassion, and evidence--don't matter, it would be a crushing defeat to admit that they do matter, and that they have no idea how any of it works, or how to go about it.
Not understanding how the world works, they fail to grasp even the connections between their own actions and the consequences. Theodore Dalyrymple notes despairingly the use of the passive voice by common criminals. "I'm sorry for what happened," they say, as if they had nothing to do with it. The criminal act in question is often a spontaneous explosion of violence, or an impetuous act, which they felt they had no control over given the circumstances. As Phillip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment proves, circumstances can make monsters of us all. But with a certain competence in life comes the ability to avoid such hair trigger circumstances--to forsee the ends of a certain course and turn aside before it goes too far.
I'm happy to admit that a well developed facility for empathy seems to be somewhat independent of raw cognitive ability, and that this alone is sufficient to prevent the worst excesses that may result from poor rational judgement. But even this can go only so far; you can still do the wrong thing for the right reason. Doing the right thing requires understanding the situation.
In a conversation with my friend Pat, he pointed out that for religious believers below a certain threshold of intelligence, God is just some big friend in the sky who does stuff for them. Interesting: below a certain level of intelligence, religion is just magic--but then, so is science and technology. But this may also explain much about the rise of postmodernism. Originally a critique of dominant ideas which might skew or limit certain fields of inquiry, postmodernism quickly devolved into a blanket claim that everything was hocus pocus, the imposition of the will of the powerful on the weaker, which somehow charms or curses them into doing the bidding of their masters. Note the terminology--the imposition of will is also a common thread in magic. "As I will it, so mote it be." I suspect that postmodernism is in fact due to the influx of mediocre minds into academia, for whom nothing is comprehensible and so everything is a trick. They don't understand how anything could be true because they cannot see how anyone could figure out a way to establish the truth.
This may have happened as early as the late 19th century, as science became arcane enough that it took dedicated study to understand how it worked. I'm talking about Nietzsche here, who was the first to declare that science was the imposition of the views of a particular social faction (the slave mentality) upon the rest. One of the reasons that Nietzschians cannot recover morality from the ash heap of nihilism is that they reject reason as well as empathy; they don't understand the world, or the people who live in it. I have always sensed in Nietzsche an overcompensation--he talks about the over-man, but he himself was anything but. It reminds me over a rather pathetic book that came out in the 80's, Power sits at another table and observations on the business of power, written, as the very title admits, by a man so marginal that no one of any significance would even sit next to him. The very title drips with a fawning admiration for influential people, but no acquaintance or understanding of them. This man wanted to write about them, but he didn't understand them at all. It was all charisma, all shadow and appearance, signs and portents--all magic.
Nietzsche's disdain for the ethic of compassion, reason, science, and any form of morality appears to be the first postmodern attempt to move the goalposts, to create a fictitious standard of merit that one already meets, or to abandon all standards and so abandon the effort. It is one thing to say that the dominant religions are outdated and need to be fixed or replaced. It is another thing to throw everything out and replace it with a wisp of a fantasy. The ubermensch is often translated as the Superman, and it's no accident that this is also the name of a comic book character. Nietsche neither experienced power nor understood it. The nobility of old, whom he took as the model of his ideal man, themselves aspired to a model of justice, one which they invented. It was never foisted upon them by their slaves--who, even by Nietzsche's logic, never had the power to do so. That ideal was weak by our standards--it did, after all, include slavery itself, and the practice of slavery probably contributed more to undermining the ancient nobility than any mere philosophy. England's abandonment of the practice forced them to invent new ways of creating wealth, and made them a great empire. America's abolishment of slavery had the same effect. The fact is that the strong attain their position through forming alliances with others, by being good managers, and by dealing at least fairly enough that others would deal with them. They did not do it by simple fiat of will. Subservience makes slaves of everyone, even the masters.
What is The Secret but a dime-store repackaging of Nietzsche's Will to Power? The very term, Will to Power, is a magical invocation, more at home in the Magick of Aleister Crowley than in a work of philosophy. It is fond hope that the simple invocation of firmly held belief will somehow lead to the ends dreamed of. Ayn Rand does the same thing. Somehow, her character Roark's buildings apparently rise fully constructed out of his mind--the people who pay for them, build them, live in them, and work in them, don't seem to exist. Frank Lloyd Wright was great because he considered all these people. Roark would have been an abysmal failure as an architect.
I think that's why Nietzsche went catatonic--not because of the syphilis, or even from cosmic despair, but because he crashed when he realized that all he ever wanted to be was the over-man, and he never would be (his last book, Ecce Homo, was a raving proclamation of his own genius--something by then that I suspect he had lost all confidence in.) His despair was personal. And to anyone like him, who wants the claim that all of this stuff--science, truth, compassion, and evidence--don't matter, it would be a crushing defeat to admit that they do matter, and that they have no idea how any of it works, or how to go about it.
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