Two aphorisms

The ability to ridicule oneself is probably a sign of great self-confidence, but the boundary line between self-riducule and self-pity is not very clear, and self-pity seems not to stem from self-confidence but rather from a lack of it.

The egoistic or ego-centered thoughts that most people seem to have at one time or another (that the whole world and whatever is in it exist for one's self) are actually a misconception or a reflection of the fact that each person is unique.

Truth versus Dissemblance

One difference between a book by a respectable political scientist and Hitler's book Mein Kampf is that the scholar tries to make arguments that make sense, while Hitler tries to make arguments that seem to make sense. One does not learn any rational arguments from reading Hitr's book. What one does learn is a fascist's method for distorting truth to fit his or her own purposes. This in itself can be quiet elightening, as it makes one more conscious of an author's motives. One right-wing propaganda tactic is to use different words to describe the same phenomenon, depending on whose interests is being served. Thus the U.S. "librates" Grenada, wh the Soviet union "invads" Afghanistan. Another right-wing tactic is to make their opponts seem to be saying something other than what the opponents are actually saying. Another right-wing tactic is to pretend to be humanitarian, in order to appal to the audience on an emotional level. Another tactic related to the one above is the right wing's pretension to be speaking from some moral high ground.

Truth versus Wisdom

The war between the tendency towards search for truth versus that towards search for wisdom. The Pre-Socratics searching for truth, and then Socrates coming along and searching for wisdom through searching for truth. Plato and Aristotle searching for truth, and then the Post-Aristotelians searching for wisdom. The Medieval Philosophers searching for truth, and Montaigne searching for wisdom. There seems to come into being: first, a sense of mystery (Hesiod and those previous to him), and then a rationalization of that into boredom. The mysteries seems to force itself upon the attention of philosophers after it has been rationalized away.

Television as a new religion

Television was promoted in order to fill the place vacated by Christianity. TV promotes the same values as Christianity. More importantly, they both prevent the possibility of communal ideas and feelings taking hold. (As Gabriel Marcel may put it, they prevent the mass from becoming a universal.) During the declining years of the Roman Empire, among the confusion of tongues and religions in the empire, the possibility arose that the various communities would begin to see their salvation in the universal. Hence mass salvation was imposed on them.

Mother Teresa's real mission

The "Sisters of Mercy" somehow always go to places where organized resistance to capitalist compression is forming -- by the very poorest.

Faith, nationalism, and racism

Racist and nationalist thinking are the same type of thinking as religious thinking. Fideism is a mystical philosophical doctrine derived from the idea that the highest truth and goodness are beyond human comprehension. This doctrine has given rise to expressions such as "leap of faith": as the human mind is taken to be unable to reach absolutely certain truths and values, they can only be reached by means of a leap of faith. Although fideism as a doctrine is not popularly known, it has been widely used to justify belief in irrational religious ideas. In fact, as explained below, faith is outside the realm of rationality; therefore faith is inseparable from fideism.

Although fideism was formulated into a philosophical doctrine by highly respected writers and philosophers, such as Montaigne, Pascal, and Kierkegaard, it has become associated with fanaticism and intellectual laziness -- and for good reason. Notwithstanding the significant contributions of fideist writers, fideism is essentially an abdication of the will to know, and inevitably leads to fanaticism. As the object of faith is defined as irrational, the highest and purest form of faith would presumably consist of belief in the greatest absurdities conceivable. Hence the dialectic of faith itself leads to belief in not just absurd ideas, but the belief in the greatest possible absurdities.

One way to understand this process is to think of the historical dialectic of religious faith versus knowledge. As knowledge pushed back the boundaries of ignorance about the world, religion was gradually forced out of this universe, and into a supernatural one. In other words, as more and more natural processes were (more or less) understood, the primitive nature religions, based as they were on absurd ideas about nature, were replaced by religions based on abstract and sophisticated absurdities.

As Tertulian, a third-century Christian theologian, put it: "I believe it because it is incredible." And the more incredible the "object" of belief, the more the likelihood of fanaticism. An irrational idea can have only an emotional hold on a person as the mind reject such an idea. Thus the more irrational and far from known reality one's beliefs are, the more would be the need for strong emotional attachment to the beliefs. In other words, an irrational belief can give rise to fanaticism.

Religion does not, however, have a monopoly on irrational beliefs. The object of faith may be any idea based on unquestionable premises, rather than on evidence. "Race" and "nation" are two such ideas.

The two concepts of "race" and "nation" or as absurd and internally incoherent as any religious idea. The two concepts were invented by the same people, namely the nineteenth-century colonial powers, strictly as tools of domestic and colonial domination.

The concept of race has no content whatsoever, surprising as such a claim may be. It is usually assumed, without question, that there are three or four "main" racial groups, and several subgroups within these. The main groups are supposed to include the Caucasian, the black, and the oriental races. Each of these is supposed to consist of the native inhabitants of a particular continent or part of one.

The real world, however, is not nearly so simple and neat. No two neighboring groups of native inhabitants look radically different from each other. For example, the French have common feature with both Germans and Spaniards; Egyptians have common features with both Middle Eastern Arabs and the Sudanese; so do the Burmese with both Indians and Thais; and so on. In the real world there are no racial boundary lines. The concept of race was derived from an arbitrary selection of extreme points on what is in reality and unbroken continuum.

Paralell to the use of the concept of race as a rationalization of oppression and exploitation of "inferior" people, the colonial powers invented the concept of nation to unify their own countries' people behind their rulers. The word "nation," which originally simply referred to a bond to one's place of birth (as in native, nativity, and so on) was made to refer to the total population who happened to live within the domain of the same ruler.

Absurd as the concepts of race and nation are, they were not nearly as absurd as many religious beliefs and practices thousands of years old. This may well account for the hold of and nationalism and racial stereotypes on people's minds; the little lies are easy to swallow once the Big Lie has been assimilated.

The future does not belong to us

A tacit premise of all arguments against the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons is that the continued existence of the homo sapiens is desirable. Let us suspended this premise for just one moment, and considere the ultimate consequence of an all-out nuclear war. Such a war wiould annihilate most -- though not necessarily all -- animal species. Survivors would probably include -- if not consist of -- insects, as they have great tolerance toward nuclear radiation. Thanks to evolution, maybe in another billion years or so, intelligent descendants of today's insects would walk the earth. They would look nothing like us, and the earth would probably look very different too. More significantly, their personalities would be different from ours; they would be more industrious, social-minded, and less desirous of individual material well-being -- truly all-for-one and, especially, one-for-all -- truly social animals. They would be genuine social animals, as indeed they have always been, unlike the so called social animals among mammalian species, which, generally speaking, tolerate and utilize society for their own ends, and are in fact lazy, self-centered, and greedy brutes. Maybe all won't be lost, after all. At least, insects would never wage nuclear war.

An equitable formula for voting power at the United Nations

The U.S. and other Western countries have long objected to the one-country-one-vote scheme at the U.N. They claim that because of their large contributions to the U.N., as well as their large populations, some kind of weighted voting system is desirable. So the first question is whether their argument makes sense, and, if so, whether their criteria are the ones that should be considered in setting up such a scheme. A preliminary argument is that although different countries have different populations and so on, they should have equal representation because, in being sovereign nations, they are equal. In other words, they all have the same interest in themselves and their own interests, as any other one has in itself and its interests; the argument is similar to one that can be made for equal rights for individuals. However, as countries are not exactly individuals, but rather made up of individuals, it seems to make sense that their voting power at an international organization should have something to do with their populations; otherwise, a small number of people, albeit in a large number of countries, may vote against the interests of a large number of people in a small number of countries. It also seems useful to have, as one criterion of weighting the votes, the amount of each country's continuation. This is because such a procedure creates a healthy competition among states to contribute more and more to the U.N., which should help its becoming a true world government. In other words, a balance is created between increased contributions and decreased international authority of individual nations; that is to say, a state may choose to give more in order to get a stronger voice on the international scene, but at the same time the increased contributions make international agencies more powerful, and hence reduce each nation's ability to imposit will on other nations. So far, then, the formula for calculating weighted votes is:

Votes = Population x Contribution

It seems fair, however, that the absolute amount of contribution should be balanced by introducing a factor for ability to pay. Per capita income is the first sich factor that comes to mind:

Votes = (Population x Contribution) / Per capital income

A simple per capita income figure, however, is not quite representative of ability to pay, because it may hide wide disparities in individual income in many countries. A fairer measure of ability to pay, then, may be that the per capita income of the poorer half of each country's population:

Votes = (Population x Contribution) / Per capita income of poorer half

This arrangement is not fair either, because the figure for "contribution" already has a component of "population."

Votes = Contribution / Per capita of half

Another factor that may be introduced is the cost of living in each country. This is to answer the objection that the same amount of money buys different quantities of goods in different countries. The figures used should, however , relate to the absolute minimum amount of money needed to subsist in each country, though some allowance may be made for local standards.

Votes = (Contribution x Cost of living) / Per capital income of poorer half

As in progressive taxation , where the rich supposedly pay a higher percentage of their income than the poor, a similar coefficient should be introduced in the above formula. The amount of this coefficient would depend on the ratio of

Per capita income of poorer half / Cost of living

so that the higher the ratio, the closer would the coefficient be to, say, 1.00. The final formula, then, is:

Votes = (Contribution x Cost of living) / (Coefficient x Per capita income of poorer half)

Means and ends in politics

There is not necessarily just a single species of progressive person, as far as political movements are concerned. In other words, the work of different "progressive" groups may possibly be in conflict with each other . One example is the fact that the environmental movement concerned with whales may not really care about politicians to about nuclear weapons (on second thought, though, the same people seem to be interested in both of these issues, so this first example may not be a very good one -- in fact, it will turn out that it isn't, because there is no fundamental difference between the two issues). My second example, a better one, has to do with the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua, on one hand, versus the antinuclear [weapons] movement, on the other. If the revolution in Nicaragua fails, some of those concerned with the Nicaraguan experiment may not care very much whether the Bomb falls or doesn't fall. In other words, they may feel that if the Nicaraguan [revolutionary] experiment fails, the survival of the homo sapiens is not something worth worrying about. The third example is about the fact that a proponent of feudalism, for example, was a progressive person several hundred years ago. In other words, and more generally, contradictory causes have been "progressive" at different times and places. An item in the newspaper today made me aware of this contradiction again. A certain extreme-leftist European group, while denouncing nuclear missile, had also denounced "petite bourgeois pacifism." Apparently they feel that the usual antinuclear protester has the wrong attitude. They seem to see such a person as someone who is simply concerned with peace, that is, lack of any kind of conflict. Notwithstanding the obvious Marxist rhetoric, there does seem to be an important point here. On one side there is concern for peacefulness and stability. On the other side there is concern for pursuit of concrete realizations of high ideals. The kind of tragedy that can result from confusing the two can perhaps be illustrated with reference to the Iranian revolution. The rhetoric has always declared the revolution to be for the betterment of the lot of the downtrodden and the exploited. One notices the contradiction when one sees that the clergy who preach for an end to injustice and exploitation, represent the very forces that caused the problem in the first place. Religion is the opiate of the people; it tends to keep them pacified and concerned with their small personal problems, and to keep them from perceiving the larger societal picture. It is a means of keeping people ignorant of the real nature of their plight. For example, it keeps them from realizing that concern for personal salvation, and therefore disregard for the essentially social nature of human existence, is a part of the problem. By assuming the progressive rhetoric, the Iranian clergy managed to lure the progressive elements to its side. The progressives forgot that religion is not something to join for them, but rather something to try to get rid of.

What does God have to do with it?

Religions just say "Believe." How can I believe, when you don't give me anything to believe? Religion is completely without substance. If they say "believe in God and the message of this or that messenger of God," I would say "Why?" If they bring in miracles, I would give Hume's answer, including the fact that even if I personally saw a miracle, it would only prove something wrong with my senses; and also there is the fact that miracles do not prove the existence of a God, and so how can they prove somebody is a messenger of God? If in answer to my original question "Why?" they say "Because we believe in brotherhood and peace, and so on," I would say "I already believe in all those things, and they have nothing to do with belief in any God or religion I do not need God or religion to think and act as a mature adult human being. The basis of humanism is not a set of beliefs; rather, it is a mature realization of what it means to be a human being, namely to think and act rationally, or in other words not to act according to the whims and impulses. A rational agent is a moral agent, because a rational agent automatically behaves morally, that is, in accordance with principles of brotherhood, charity, and so on. Charity is based on faith in man, and hope for his future.

If an advice falls in the forest...

People consult others about their own problems, in order to have their own thoughts and incipient decisions confirmed. If the second person does not confirm those thoughts and decisions, he may be disliked. But this may be completely rational, in his own way. In rejecting the consultant for giving unfavorable advice, the first person is saying "You are not what I thought you were." In other words, the seeker comes to the adviser with the subconscious thought in mind that "I know this person is such and such a type of individual, and that therefore he would see the situation in such and such a way, which is also how I see this situation." If this expectation is not confirmed, the seeker rejects the adviser and his advice; he rejects the adviser, because the adviser turns out to be a "phony" -- he has been pretending, as the seeker sees it, to be something other than what he is; the seeker rejects the advice, because the advice, as the seekers sees it, is issued from a source that the seeker now does not see as competent to advise the seeker on the matter. If the seeker is unwilling to reject the advisor, however, the seeker will try to distort the advice; he may think to himself: "He didn't really understand what I meant, because I didn't explain it very well"; or "even though he said "Do A," he really meant "Do B ""; or "To implement his advice to "Do A," I would really have to "do B""; or "He tried his best, but he really doesn't know about this sort of thing."

Feminism and Compassion

One rather puzzling feature of the feminist movement is hatred of men. It has perhaps justifiably led some to think of feminists as essentially lesbian – the point being that there are legitimate feminists, but that the rest are feminist because they are lesbian, not lesbian because they are feminist. This is, of course, an oversimplification of the matter, in any case. The point, however, is a serious one. Some lesbian feminists claim that lesbianism is inseparable from feminism, because man is the enemy. In other words, they see a conceptual conflict (and not simply an emotional one) between intimacy with men and the cause of feminism. They interpret their whole being in feminist terms are, and can therefore only fit intimacy with another woman into the picture. This is what they claim, in any case. It seems, however, that this view is based on an interpretation of feminism as the liberation of the female species, rather than that of female human beings. Whether conceptually wrong or not, their analysis is contrary to historical evidence. The main impetus behind the modern feminist movement was the American Civil Rights movement, which was definitely aimed at improving women’s lot as much as that of men. Lesbian feminism, however, loses touch with humanist values as soon as it becomes able to divide humanity into two species. This is perhaps why compassion and peace pervaded the Civil Rights and peace movements of the 1960s, and are absent from the feminist movement. On a more practical level, it’s true that overstatement is needed in order to make important and unfamiliar concepts understood, but espousing hatred of man simply in order to make a point is ridiculous, if not ultimately counterproductive. To make men out to be a gang of brutes out raping their wives and committing incest with their daughters, neither just rewards the many men who are deeply concerned about the plight of women, nor does it creates the proper frame of mind for women to help men understand the nature of that plight.

How real are you?

I was thinking about the idea that on the strict philosophical level one can’t talk about a dead person – at least not without using highly convoluted language. For example, I can’t talk about a dead person and use words like “he” or “she” or “John Smith” in referring to the person, because, strictly speaking, these words are meaningful only in reference to living persons who can be pointed out as the reference point for these words. So far, it seems that we can only talk about what exists. But this distinction breaks down in the case of a person who I am not sure is still alive or not. If I am not sure whether John Smith is alive, I can talk about him as a person who quite possibly a exists; the possibility is enough to enable me to do so, since in no case are we certain of anyone’s existence unless the person is sitting right in front of us – someone I saw a minute ago may have been struck by lightning right after leaving. If it turns out that the person I was talking about did not exist as I was talking about him, this fact in itself should not make what I said meaningless. After all, we constantly talk about people who we assume to be still alive, who could possibly not be alive. There is, however, an apparent paradox here. On one hand, we can talk about anything that we presume to exist, whether it does or not. On the other hand, we can’t talk meaningfully about anything, as we may be wrong in presuming its existence . The paradox can be resolved if we realize that the problem here is the concept concept of “thing”, and other concepts like it, such as “person.” “He,” “she,” “John Smith,” “tree,” and so on are fictional constructs that we create in our minds to make it possible to go on living . Such concepts are equivalent to nonexistent ones such as “Napoleon” and “the Library of Alexandria.” Both in the case of “the living, breathing, John Smith” and “Napoleon,” I am referring to constructs in my mind. An objection at this point is that John Smith would surely not agree that he is an artificial or fictional construct. We may answer the objection by trying to clarify the matter further. When someone else refers to me as “he," he is creating a fictitious entity. His "he" is a different entity than my “I.” My “I” and John Smith’s “I.” are both quite real, or at least real insofar as they are the foundations for everything else that we are and know. But what makes the “I” itself possible is the historical nature of human consciousness. We are, so far as we know, the only creatures on this planet who can think of “Napoleon” or “yesterday’s lunch.” The same thing goes on when we refer to “John Smith.” What we mean when we say “John Smith” is the set of memories we have of a particulars spatio-temporal continuity's behaviour. We can only see and think in historical terms. One question at this point is whether the “historical” and “fictitious” are interchangeable, because if they are, then the “I” may also be fictitious – because the “I” appears also to be historical. There seem to be two solutions. The first one is to say that the transcendental “I” is unhistorical and eternal. The other solution is to say that the “I” is in fact of the same nature as everything else. These seem to correspond to the Dualist and Monist solutions in various philosophies.

Character is behaviour

Personal character is a means of predicting people’s behaviour, and not a means of judging their behaviour. People observe one’s character from the outside, so an act that is “out of character” is really in character. This is because the act is a part of the person’s total behavior. The pattern of behaviour can only give us general directions in predicting people’s behaviour, and not judgments about particular acts.

Quality versus quantity in J.S. Mill

Can we know whether our actions are right by using J.S. Mill's theory? --

Happiness, being a quality, is not measurable . In other words, qualitative concepts such as happiness, cannot be quantified, or, for that matter, defined. The reasons for the unsuitability of happiness as a moral criterion should become clearer as we proceed.

Even if we assume happiness to be quantifiable, and even if we are convinced that some action produces happiness, we can never be sure whether it can produce the same balance of happiness against happiness in the long run. Smoking cigarettes may make people happy, but in the long run they may pay for all of that "happiness" with a greater "amount" of unhappiness. How is one to balance many years of mild happiness against a few years of intense unhappiness (due to lung cancer and so on) unless one evokes a "higher" criterion, for example, the intrinsic value of human life? If human life is valuable irrespective of the amount of happiness or unhappiness that it producers, then we can say that smoking cigarettes is bad because it cuts human life short, and not because it causes unhappiness. The problem is that Mill disregards the question of whether the means towards happiness are good or bad in themselves or not.

To remain within his own theory, however, Mill has to disregard the significance of means in any action, and stress only the end result of actions. An act can have a very "happy" consequence, without necessarily being a result of "happy" means. For instance, a feudal lord may drive his serfs night and day in order to produce the maximum possible amount of grains and so on, all the while telling them that it is all for their own eventual happiness. The latter may be true, but one may ask whether all the unhappiness during the year was worth the happiness gained at the end of the year. The question cannot be answered by mere reference to quantitative comparison of the two amounts of happiness and unhappiness, assuming such comparison to the possible. An adequate answer requires reference to such matters as human dignity and freedom, which are outside the Utilitarian sphere of definition.

Mill also does not make it clear how exceptions to moral rules are dealt with, that is, how does one know how widespread those exceptions are.

Mill's theory suffers not only from the inability to tell us what action is right, but also from internal inadequacies and inconsistencies. For instance, what would be the motive or incentive for a person, in cases where there is a conflict between personal and general happiness, to follow the Utilitarian principle and ignore his own happiness for the sake of general happiness? In other words, Mill does not deal with the apparent priority of self-interest in all human actions in a convincing way. The incentives mentioned by Mill, that is, the "external" motives of law and opinion, and the "internal" ones of education and reason, do not seem to be quite adequate to deal with the problem:
(a) If we need laws to act as incentives for good behaviour, then what is the use of a personal code of behaviour such as Utilitarianism?
(b) Opinions of others are by no means infallible, since on one hand they can be manipulated and altered to his own advantage by a sufficiently clever person, and on the other hand others do not know about a great deal of one's behaviour, and, of course, they are not able to form any opinions about them as a consequence.
(c) No matter how highly educated a person may be, he can probably never escape from the overwhelming influence of self-interest on his actions.
(d) Mill refuses to base his morality on subjective feeling about actions, and now he wants to base it on subjective reasoning processes. If the morality of actions can be rationally derived, then what is the use of general moral principles such as Utilitarianism?

Dialectic of praise

Complimenting someone for having done something, or praising the quality of his work, is often a sign of a lack of appreciation. In the first case, the compliment may be interpreted as "Oh! So you finally overcame your laziness and did this.” In the second case, the praise may be interpreted as "See! You're quite able to do an acceptable job; so there is no reason or excuse for allowing your laziness to overcome you.” In both cases, the "nice words" quite likely have an undertone of reproach. True and deep appreciation can only be shown by being nice to the person; such an attitude proves to the person that he is appreciated, rather than this or that act of his.

The absurd meets the irrational

It occurred to me a while back that it might be interesting to try to figure out whether Jesus believed he had the answer, or whether he merely hoped (fervently) that he had the answer. The question arises because religious faith appears at best to be no more than a Pascalian wager. Such a faith, although it may make the person feel warm and holy, is never a rational certainty -- not to speak of its essentially paradoxical character. Hence faith gives rise to hope, and thus to charity; but it does not give rise to rational belief. Any evidence to the effect that Jesus had a rational belief in his message, then, would seem to be proof that he was either indeed the son of god, or that he was "emotionally disturbed.” One way to settle this question may be by analyzing the tone of his sermons: does he seem to be stating rational beliefs, or is he "selling"? Is he just trying to convince his audience, or is he trying to convince himself too?

From hero to madman

The treatment of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn by the Western media. His heroism and defiance of the system were originally admired. Later on, the idea resurfaced that whoever would destroy his personal life or even inconvenience himself in any way for the sake of an ideal, must be a madman. Hence began their reports on what was wrong with him, and eventually he was shunned and ignored by the media. In the [former] East, dissidents are suppressed; in the West, they are ignored -- hence they in fact receive more attention in the East than in the West. Solzhenitsyn's fall from hero to madman can perhaps be understood in light of the previous post: the man who lives for an ideal is incomprehensible to the average person; since the gods are dead, he is simply "abnormal" -- in other words, a madman.

Deification by design

The primitive’s deification of whatever he/she does not understand – principally, large-scale natural phenomena – is translated into the theistic person’s deification of whatever is morally beyond belief, and hence beyond understanding; the character of a “prophet,” for instance, is beyond the common person’s understanding – hence, for example, the deification of Jesus. The primitive worships that which arouses powerful feelings in him/her, and yet seems utterly superior to the primitive’s own level of existence. The Christian worships Jesus, because Jesus’ message has a powerful emotional impact, yet the Christian does not really want to be like Jesus; the Christian, therefore, has to believe that Jesus is utterly superior to his own level of existence. The Christian indeed fears Jesus, in the same way that the primitive fears Thunder. Jesus threatens to destroy the Christian’s real ideas about the right way to live and to be. The Christian is as far from understanding Jesus, as the primitive is from understanding thunder.

Nazism is history... or is it?

Hitler may have lost the war, but he did not lose the Kampf. The "ideals" of Mein Kampf -- which are, in fact, Hitler's observations on how the realities of the human condition can be used to propel a small group to power -- are on their way to become the realities of each country in the world. National Socialism as the actual political philosophy of the post-war world.

It’s for a good causality

Causality has generally been misunderstood. The concept of a mechanical, and therefore meaningless, causality misses the “intentionality” or purpose that is inherent in causality; in other words, the correct meaning of the world “causality” contains the connotation of purpose, and any mechanical understanding of causality is simply a misapprehension borne of fuzzy thinking. When a glass falls off a table and breaks, one clear way of understanding the event, as opposed to unclear, passive, ways of understanding it, is by describing it this way: “The floor broke the glass.” The description may at first seem absurd, but it is no more absurd than “I lifted the glass to my lips” – rather than “The glass got lifted to my lips.” The supposed accidentalness of human existence, a bastard child of the evolutionary theory, stems from a similar root, namely, a misunderstanding of the nature of evolutionary causality. An illustration from a different field may help to clarify the matter. Take cooking. The usual understanding of the process of cooking is that the ingredients come into being as a result of interactions between the sun and the soil, and then they are picked up and used as food. Let us look at the matter differently. The sun and the soil give plants what these require. Plants use what they are given to improve themselves and to ripen into tasty and nutritious produce; hence, they give of themselves to animals. Animals use what they are given by plants to nourish themselves, and to grow and mature, hopefully, into good friends of the earth. In the case of human beings, then, the intention would be to give rise to a being that is capable of a relatively full appreciation of the whole process.

The Essences of Childhood

Children take their lives and the world more seriously than adults do; a child accepts every facet of life as intrinsically meaningful. He/she does not require a superstructure of laws of interaction and meanings of relationships to make sense of the world. This purity and atomism of childhood begins to disappear as more and more laws and extrinsic meanings are taken for granted. Hence, adults become blasé about the world, while moving away from essences. As an illustration, the essence of goodness and evil are directly accessible to a child; to an adult, however, goodness and evil are vague, abstract, and intangible unknowns that have nothing to do with the “concrete reality" of day-to-day life. Adults, therefore, play the game of life, though without being truly serious about it; children, on the other hand, play their games in total awareness of their meanings, and in earnest seriousness. Children know the True, the Good, and the Beautiful in the latter three’s actual essence, and require no concepts to “visualize” them; adults need the concepts to categorize and visualize those essences, as they are no longer able to directly perceive them. Children are not taught the essences; rather, they are made to forget them. Does one begin to get old when one has completely forgotten the essences?

From showing-off to showing-with

At some point in life, not necessarily the same point for everyone, childish showing-off turns into adult sharing. In children, showing off may be a means of trying to overcome a sense of weakness or virtual non-existence; this will become clearer if we perhaps extend the meaning of “child” to include all supposedly immature persons; it is a known fact among a certain elite that the search for a physically attractive mate is for reasons of vanity, rather than individual need or want. The latter point can be substantiated by a desert-island illustration: in such a situation, basic sexual compatibility is sufficient, and no frills are necessary – or even meaningful. Showing-off, then, is for a “child” a means of affirming some meaningfulness for her existence as opposed to the existence of others. As the basic existence of the person gradually become established, however, the need for antagonistic existence diminishes; there grows, in its place, the need for filling out qualitative gaps in that existence. In other words, the person is more or less aware of his own weaknesses at this point, weaknesses that he has to live with, and which he cannot overcome by acquiring new toys to show off. At this point, the person needs simultaneously to show her own weaknesses and to overcome them; she needs to show her weaknesses, because that is the only way she can be what she really is – in other words, showing one’s weaknesses becomes a means to confirm one’s own existence, as opposed to the earlier state, where showing weakness was suppressed at all cost. Mere unveiling of weaknesses, however, leaves a meaningless and empty blank. Hence, the weaknesses need to be overcome as they are being unveiled. This can be done by mutual collaboration between two persons; as the first person shows off, for instance, her knowledge of geography or his new car, the second person moves in, and, by showing interest or enthusiasm, brings meaning into the situation. Speaking more explicitly, the first person, by showing off her knowledge or his possessions, communicates his/her need for approval. Therefore, showing off, far from creating interpersonal distance and antagonism, as it did in “childhood,” become a means of sharing oneself with others. An established and mature personality no longer means to say, “I have a lot of knowledge, money, or taste”; rather, such a person wishes to convey his/her qualitative weaknesses, and to seek help in alleviating them.

The one in all

Why should I try to be considerate and warm towards the bank teller or the supermarket cashier? After all, she is only a stranger who I will never get to know. Nevertheless, isn't she just like me and all the people I do know? Wouldn't I like to have been friendly towards the people I now know, when I did not yet know them? Aren't people, therefore, deserving of consideration and warmth, irrespective of whether I happened to know them or not? After all, everyone is someone's friend or acquaintance. Thus, perhaps, the mystic's vision of "the one in all" -- or, as some of them would say, the vision of the friend in all; through such a vision, the artificial duality of friend and foe, and hence that of I and he, dissolves into a unified vision of all humanity, and perhaps later into a universal vision embracing own life, and eventually the entire cosmos; the latter may perhaps be accomplished by thinking of the cosmos as a part of what I am, rather than an "it".

Caught in moralisms

When Nietzsche says, "I am the opposite of the Yes-saying spirit," he means that he is not the kind of man whose thoughts run in channels of approval and disapproval, that is, the moralistic kind of man. Nietzsche's statements, for example the one about the blond beast of prey, have been interpreted by such men -- or rather misinterpreted by them -- as moralistic statements of approval or disapproval -- the statements are, in fact, no more or less than metaphors about reality, and as such they are statements of fact, not value.

Removing the subject

Problem: finding out what a friend really thinks of one. Solution: asking another friend to ask the first one about oneself, without the second person revealing the purpose of his inquiry, and with the understanding that he will not reveal the answer to anyone; in other words, using sneaky and indirect means -- more bluntly, using guile and deception. Corollary: Can a parallel methodology be developed for experimental science, to eliminate the subjectivity of observation, and to make nature speak for itself? In both questions, the problem is making the source of knowledge speak independently of one's psychological influence upon him or it.

The origin of politics

People turn to the bringing forth of politics and political systems only when they can no longer tolerate life with their fellow beings -- and in this case "can't" means "ought not to," but inertia keeps people from bringing the latter fact to the level of consciousness. Politics, then, comes into being as a means of restraining beings whose instincts urge them to find a few like-minded individuals, and go away to found a new community. Hobbes was right in his view of the nature of politics, but not in his view of the need for it -- at least as far as manageably small, harmonious communities are concerned -- though, on the other hand, he was talking, after all, about the Leviathan.

The poverty of poverty

Poverty is depressing -- to its "sufferers" that is -- not because of anything in poverty itself, but rather because of the way it is interpreted -- I am of course talking about the case where the basic survival and the basic happiness requirements are available. The reason poverty is depressing is that it is perceived as the lack of something one should have; more exactly, it is perceived as the lack of something that would supply part of the purpose of one's life. If the purpose of one's life, therefore, were defined so as not to include those "extras," their lack would of course be, at the very least, no cause for the downheartedness -- in fact, such a "lack" would not be felt at all -- an Indian farmer does not in any sense feel his life has not achieved its purpose as he doesn't own a Rolls Royce. Now as far as the genealogy (or "archaeology") of the need for these extras -- it doesn't just happen. As one begins to realize that society does not automatically provide one with the means to satisfy ones psychical needs, such as companionship of the right kind, "love," and so on -- and that even one's physical survival could possibly be endangered by a lack of food or proper shelter -- a surge of animal fear, very similar to the exultation of religious "salvation" from the dread of existence, pours forth, and crystallizes in a grasping for anything that would relieve this fear of deprivation. To summarize, the need for the extras originates in one's realization of the precariousness of one's psychical and physical survival -- that is, the first semi-conscious clue to the role of the law of the jungle in a society where economics, rather than ethics, is the basis of individual and mass conduct.

Poverty and student life

The poverty of the student life was originally an essential part of being a student, and a source of distinction, if not pride, for students. The student, as he [or very rarely she] joined the academic world, say a monastery or ancient university or college, assumed poverty as a symbol of having renounced the world, and of being in pursuit of higher aims than the accumulation of material wealth. Eventually, the concepts of “student” and “poverty” were firmly associated with each other in the popular mind – though, originally, the poverty was understood to be simply an assumed state – it was understood that the student had chosen of his own free will to lead the life of a poor man; later, however, this part of the equation was forgotten – ideas are easier to forget than appearances. The former conception was therefore replaced by the picture of the student as just another poor man – and what does a poor man want the most, if not wealth? Thus originated the picture of the student as a man who had temporarily abandoned the pursuit of wealth, in order to get ready to pursue much greater wealth…

The commodification of beauty

Admiration of female beauty may gradually be supplanted by admiration of female makeup: “Look at the makeup on that woman!!” “Doesn’t that chick have great hair-dye?” “She certainly knows how to fix her face!” – the latter exclamation perhaps suggesting a further progress of democracy, in that natural beauty, being a cause of envy and division, will be replaced by quantified makeup appeal, that anyone can partake of – beauty as a possession, rather than an indefinable, ephemeral, “I know not what.” Concomitant with the above, beauty will become active rather than passive – one makes oneself beautiful, rather than simply sit and wait to be admired for something that is already there – this adding a masculine dimension to feminine beauty. As the “classical” forms of female beauty are forgotten, and a new kind of beauty is invented to fit each particular face, the idea that there is something intangible called female beauty – that there is a form of female beauty – will gradually be forgotten. The ironical result of all this may be that the universal beautification of women will end in depreciation and abandonment of the value and meaning attached to female beauty. As was hinted above, by this time beauty may be perceived as an ability. Hence, there may be a return to the classical Greek idea that a strong and well-proportioned man, with a mind as powerful and well-organized as his body, is the most beautiful creature there is.

There is no self

The basic error of psychologists who have taken Nietzsche's notion of "masks" literally, is that they have presupposed the masks are put on an unchanging, or at least stable, foundation. It is a well-known, for instance, the men tend to be more neat and well-behaved in women's presence; it is generally assumed the men put on a different mask in women's presence than the usual one; or that they put on a mask then, while they are otherwise maskless. Such talk, however, is based on the mentioned presupposition. Without that presupposition, it becomes clear that a man becomes a different person in a woman's presence; or, in general, that any particular person becomes a different person for every other person -- that is, every person is as many persons as he happens to come into contact with. The question that, if the above is correct, then what is a person when he is by himself can be answered by reflection on the nature of solitary activity. All such activity is other-directed, that is, directed towards another person; such a person may be a particular person known to the one we are considering, or else a type of person. For example, the writing of a friendly letter is directed towards a particular person, while the writing of an unsolicited magazine article is directed towards the types "editor" and "reader.” The many-faceted nothings that we are...

Accidental design

How marvelously well-adapted we are to this planet! The balance of temperature and humidity is, on average, such that one would think it had been designed specifically for us. How much we are a part of this planet, and not just beings that happened to find themselves here, and could get up and leave if they wished! The balance is disturbed as soon as we try, for example, to heat our environment -- sickening dryness results. Indeed, the origin of our need for artificial heating may be the fact that we invented clothes, and gradually lost our natural covering. The original function of clothes may have been to indicate one's physical power, since the possession of a bearskin, for instance, showed others that the man wearing it deserved respect, or at least fear, since he was capable of doing away with a bear, let alone a man. In this respect, we would have come full circle, since the almost purely utilitarian value of clothes after we lost our own fur, has again been supplemented, and in many cases supplanted, by the use of clothes as luxury items and status symbols indicative of one's taste or wealth. In this connection, it may be relevant to consider the problems astronauts have had in trying to adjust to life in outer space, and the recent conclusions that we may not be built for spacefare. The new, human-oriented view of science may also be relevant, where science is considered as a product of the human mind; the latter is relevant because it may free us from the illusion that the universe has been custom-made for us; in other words, that everything makes so much sense not because the universe was designed for us, but rather because (1) we look at the world from the perspective of a particular kind of rational creature , and (2) are an integral part of this planet. If we went to another planet, the laws of science would still hold, since we would still be the same kind of beings that we are, but we would forever be aliens in that environment, no matter how much we tried to adjust it to suit us.

What is civilization?

I had wondered from time to time how it was that writing was not invented in the New World ; the only answer I had come up with was that somehow the need for writing had never arisen -- that may be true, of course, from the Old World point of view; we Old Worlders tend to think that "necessity is the mother of invention." but this is not necessarily true, and also writing seems to be something more than just an invention -- great works of literature, for example, seem to be much more than, or have much more reality than, just a collection of various alphabetical symbols formed and arranged according to rules invented by a group of inventors, as works of art have a reality external to their material , and so on. But to get down to the main point : the problem with the question may be that it is based on wrong presuppositions about what civilization is and how it comes into being and how it grows; it may be that the invention of writing is not a necessary part of the growth of a civilization. More importantly, the main points and last! , current Old World civilization's history is a very small fraction of the period of the homo sapiens' life on earth. But since we only happen to know the historical part of that period in any real detail, we tend to overemphasize the events of the historical period. And if someone objects that real culture and real human existence begins with settled city life -- we will not quarrel with him, since so far the above is simply an arbitrary or semi-arbitrary definition. But if he goes on to say that civilization in the sense of city life necessarily leads to the invention of writing, he would be contradicting the evidence of New world civilizations -- and no one could reasonably deny that the great Aztec, Inca, and Maya societies and so on were in any way anything less than civilizations.

What poetry is

I have been reading some poetry the past few days, or more exactly a chronological anthology of English-language poetry. I had always simply assumed that poetry is an expression of some kind of sublime experience, that poets are transcendental visionaries. Beyond this assumption, however, I had never, it seems, given the subject any serious thought. The majority of the poems I have been reading have been love poems of one sort or another. I am beginning to believe that love poetry is nothing but a means for the poet to persuade his female acquaintances into his bed. The reason I am coming to believe this, seems to be that what poets in general, though there are perhaps a few exceptions, say about their "beloved" seems to be just general compliments that seem only meant to please the other person -- as opposed to the expressions of the poet's feelings about the other person as a unique individual.

Misty Guerrillas

Thoughts on the massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon [in 1982]. I used to think I had the situation in Lebanon all figured out. The PLO was getting what was coming to it; it should have stuck to being a guerrilla organization (like the French Resistance in WWII) and avoided terrorist tactics – the label of freedom fighters would have given it a far higher stature in world opinion (although, on second thought, Afghanistan’s freedom fighters have become known as rebels, notwithstanding the fact that they have been getting extensive material support from the West). I could blame the PLO for their tactics and their apparent inefficient use of their resources (what does a resistance organization need tanks for – unless they are needed for the protection of refugee camps – which is doubtful). However, the massacre alters and confuses the whole picture. I can’t really blame the refugees for it; and I’m beginning to wonder whether it may be that the PLO’s mode of operation is the only one that works in that region; in other words, that they must fight everyone, and not just the Israeli military, just to stay alive – more or less.

No Gods need apply

I was wondering why it is that I believe everything that happens, happens for a good reason. At first, I thought it was a belief in a sort of impersonal God. But then if I believe everything in every individual’s life is meaningful, then this impersonal God cannot be that impersonal. However, a personal God is not the only choice left. My belief may just as well be interpreted as a faith in the universe – that with all its marvelous beauty, it cannot be capricious.

Ethics forced on politicians

In a news item about the coming municipal elections (the item was about Toronto) it was said that people are trying to bring provincial issues to the municipal level. As one spokesperson put it, people are trying to force municipal governments to assume ethical leadership. That reminded me of how people seem to have come to care less than ever, in recent memory, about political world events; the perception has grown that politicians will play their games and wage their wars, and so it doesn’t make much difference who the particular politician happens to be; what is important, according to this view, is that politicians be forced to do things and pass legislation that people want. Political organization seems more and more aimed at lobbying than at the support of representative democracy. People care less than before about “what is happening in the world?” and more about “what can I do about what is happening in the world?”; but they realize that individuals or small groups or even million-strong demonstrations cannot affect world politics significantly, so they get involved in local, tangible policymaking, where small groups can make a difference. The word “ethical” in the spokesperson’s comments may be just the right word; people may at last have come to realize that to be a politician is synonymous with being entirely free of ethics; hence their efforts to impose ethics from below.

Old Suburbia

I was reading an article in the Globe about Don Mills, an area of Toronto that was developed in the 1960s for the newly upwardly mobile. It talked about how sterile and contrived the place seems; it talked about the high-achievers who had lived there and then moved away without realizing how their lives had been shaped by the sterility of Don Mills. The article talked about a woman who, having just moved to Don Mills, invited 22 women to her house; only 8 showed up; it also talked about how privacy was a paramount consideration at Don Mills.

That got me thinking about the idea of privacy; about little groups of people hiding in their little houses, longing for the company of others though terrified of the unknown; passing their lives -- bearing their lives -- with the help of various narcotics and opiates -- physical or psychological. I thought of our blindness to the complete artificiality -- in the bad sense -- of the environment we have created; and we don't even realize that life need not be lived this way.

Artistic depiction of the human body

I had been wondering why artists are so interested in depicting the human body. After all, the human body is nothing more than an accidental product of evolutionary history; so there doesn't seem to be any special meaning in it. Everything it is everything it does is a result of some circumstance our semi-human ancestors happened to encounter. Later on in the day – or rather after midnight – I was looking through a book on drawing. It occurred to me that maybe artists have a special insight into the matter; that is to say, they see the object in a way that precludes the above analysis. To go a step further, perhaps the artistic vision of the human body is related to the human-centered sort of scientific analysis referred to as the antropic theory, rather than the above sort of objective science.

Ancestor Worship

I think I have figured out a part of the rationale for ancestor worship. I was feeling very restless this morning; more exactly, I seemed to be unwilling to get down to any serious work. Then I started, for some reason, to think about the fact that although various cultures have been civilized and/or kept records for different lengths of time, all cultures have basically been around for identical lengths of time. This led me to think of the many tens of thousands of generations that have preceded us. I suppose I felt that enormous crowd of ancestors was somehow watching out for me and rooting for me (which can perhaps be translated into primitive terminology as saying that they were protecting me). In any case, the sense of being a part of this enormous crowd of guardians seemed to dispel the sense of apathy and loneliness that had taken hold of me.