I have several chapters finished, but, having a reputation to conceal, I am not ready to publish them all on this site yet. Nevertheless, I am prepared to publish the rather long introduction.

NOTES FROM THE OVERSOUL
(And Confessions of the Undersoul)

A Series of Essays On Issues That Interest Me[1]

By Noel C. Ice

First, the Notes. The Confessions are later. As the poet said, there’s “one thing you can’t hide,” but I can at least postpone it.

BOOK I

The NOTES
(Written As If Life Were Not But A Joke)

ARTICLE 1
Prelude and Preview

1.1 Introduction to the Introduction.

This collection of essays, which I like to call a treatise in my more grandiloquent moments, is ultimately connected with meta-ethics in one way or another, albeit at times rather loosely. It is not like any work of philosophy you have ever read, or at least I hope not, for both our sakes. It should actually be entertaining at times; at times, indeed, ridiculous. We have a term, used in the rural South, called sui generis. It means “and now for something completely different.” This is that, and now for it.

Anything in Arial Font will be deleted from the public version of this work. I can simply save the original, delete everything in Arial font, and not embarrass myself by what I would like to have said.

The ideas introduced in this introduction are not intended to be supported here, much less fully elucidated. That will come later, hopefully.[2]

1.2 What I Really Mean.

I am not shy about giving my opinions, but I often disagree with them. Everything I say I really mean: mean to be provocative, mean to be ironic, yes sometimes mean to be sarcastic, mean to obliquely rouse, mean to express an unlikely aspect of what I have come to actually believe, expressed sometimes as if I were saying the opposite of what I really mean, because the opposite is often also true, in a sense; and what I say, considered in its proper context, is intended to lead, albeit sometimes paradoxically, and not always directly, to a conclusion I have actually reached, if I have reached one; and if I haven’t, then I am trying it on for size. But, despite all that, I never mean to be disingenuous.

1.3 When You Have No Publisher You Can Say Any Damn Thing You Please.

This treatise(?) is about a lot of things. It is my notes from the oversoul or my undersoul’s version of it. In any case, I am not constrained by the usual formalities at this point and can write whatever and however I damn well please, since nobody is paying me for it and I imagine that few will read it. I can even be maudlin on occasion, as I will in a moment, but you will find that uncommon and not a general tendency of my nature.

In writing this work, I am very tempted to discard the rather flippant, ironic at best, sarcastic at worst, writing style that comes most easily to me, and affect instead the serious writing of a serious author. Of this I am, no doubt (at least not in my own mind), quite capable of doing. It might even be fun to re-work this whole treatise, as if it were more obviously what it is, a serious work. But much would be lost. The humor is intended to add to the meaning, rather than to entertain merely, and the liberal use of irony (oddly enough) is often the only hope I have of communicating in a way that will not mislead.

1.4 Meta-Ethics is Really What this Treatise is About.[3]

This treatise, or collection of essays (I am not sure yet which it is yet), will touch upon many subjects, will have many spokes, and yet it will have ethics, or, more specifically, meta-ethics as its hub. At times the subject may seem to stray, but if so, that is because meta-ethical principles, systematically derived and developed, as I intend they will be here, have as a source and context all that we know of the vast corpus of life and the universe, recognizing at the same time that we actually know very little of it.

The project as I conceive of it is somewhat ambitious, because the ethical system I advocate is inextricably bound up with all of what we know of the world, and I will not be limiting myself to the usual approaches, which either attempt to identify empirically what is normative (and hence relative), or which appeal to deontological rules said to have been revealed somehow, but which cannot otherwise be derived. (It turns out that most deontological rules do have a rational derivation, which can almost always be found in an unarticulated and barely conscious utilitarianism of sorts.) Even though I have never read Douglas Adams, I suspect that this might be something like A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Meta-Ethics, except that I really am in earnest.

1.5 Preparation.

I have not undertaken this project lightly. I have spent my entire life in preparation for it. I have read widely[4] enough to have an adequate idea of what has been said and what has not. Most of what I have to say I had pretty well worked out when I was 20, but I spent the next 30 plus years or so preparing, during every available spare moment, with the intention of developing a common context in which to share my thoughts, so that at least some of you will be able to benefit from allusions that I hope will be understood by the only type of person to whom I expect that this treatise will appeal. I just want to get some leverage out of what has been said already, again to save your time and mine. However, I don’t expect that this will thereby render the work recondite. I hope that even if your only background is in good common-sense, that this treatise will be accessible, provided you have an open mind, and that your thinking is relatively free.

If you believe in astrology, the tooth fairy (except, as always, as metaphor), or are waiting for someone like him, you might as well hand me the pliers and wait for the electrician. The reason why I don’t believe in astrology is that I am not a fire sign. (This is such good theater.)

1.6 Teleology or Not Teleology, That is the Question.

My system of ethics does not depend on whether or not there is a “Purpose” to the world, a Hegelian unfolding that we can count on being beneficent and somehow guided or planned. But it would be very important, nevertheless, to come to grips with the possibility that such just might be the case. It would make a difference in how radical we can safely be in attempting to change things for the better. It would also make the fardels of a weary life easier to bear if we thought that there was a Purpose to it all. And, to mix metaphors, as Shakespeare was certainly fond of doing, we might be more or less inclined to take up arms against a sea of troubles if we knew whether fortune was indeed as outrageous as its slings and arrows sometimes suggest. Ah, there’s the rub. (That was kind of fun.)

I honestly think that there is a Purpose, but I don’t think that being lucky enough to divine the correct answer to the question of whether there is, much less what it is, will win you any prizes in the after-life. The very idea that so many people are capable of thinking that it will is enough to cause me to seriously doubt that there could possibly be a Purpose. Nevertheless, I shall proceed as if there is a Purpose, and if it turns out to be of my own making, which I doubt, then nothing is truly lost. If I think there is a Purpose, whether there is one or not, the only difference would be in my level of optimism, assuming the Purpose is good. Don’t forget that believing that there is a Purpose is not in itself a cause for optimism; there could be a Purpose and yet it could be a malevolent one (and there is certainly evidence that could be marshaled in support of that possibility as well). So unless I am told that the Purpose is a good one, I would just as soon not know for sure whether there is a Purpose or not.

Actual or metaphorical Purpose or no, I advocate a theoretical God’s eye view approach to meta-ethics, based on the notion that if there is or were a Purpose what do we think it is or ought to be. That is no easy task, but it is one worth aspiring to, as best we can. We thereby seek to carry out what we think God’s will is, or would be. In doing that, we can only work with what we know, or give up the project as altogether hopeless and aspire to become sociopaths as the highest form of existence, or join a fundamentalist cult and anesthetize our weary minds by accepting blindly what others have made up (for all we know).

1.7 Designed?

I am quite convinced that there is a “design” to the universe (whatever that means). In fact that is my starting point, but the system I will develop does not really depend on it. Before I am derisively compared to Rev. Paley,[5] I must assure you that the conclusions I draw from my belief on this subject are somewhat modest. In fact, I can read Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins,[6] both of whom I thoroughly admire, and still be quite confident that there is more to it than they would have you believe. In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins makes about as good a case against the argument from design as can be made. And he is perfectly convincing when he demonstrates how blind evolution can produce an organ as complicated as the eye, without God the ophthalmologist framing the symmetry. But what Dawkins, Gould, et. al., do not seem to grasp, or even care about, is the question of whether it is not indeed amazing (i.e., improbable) that the universe is constructed (I wanted to say “designed” but realized it would be too question begging) so that a concept as simple as evolution works so well. Again, applying a term like “improbable” to the way the universe is actually constructed is worth much more treatment, since the concept is quite problematic (sic) when you think about it. If universes are being created at random, what kind of universe is more probable than other kinds? Are we even equipped to ask such a question?[7]

All I know is that there was a big bang one or two dozen billion years ago, and a handful of fundamental particles assembled themselves into us, into airplanes, movies, television sets, computers, Beethoven, Rembrandt, cathedrals, paintings and statues of magnificent sublimity, and yes, the human eye. And, it turns out that these particles are a form of energy, which is to say that waves, matter, fields and light, are all different aspects of the same thing (E=MC²), somehow fundamentally united as a matter of physics; and that they are also related to something called “time,” which is a concept no one fully understands, including Henri Bergson and Stephen Hawking. So I ask, would one not be right to expect that a truly unbiased, unprejudiced person (a Darwinian, a scientist) would find it to be inadequate to say that it was just all a matter of chance having nothing to do with anything other that itself?

To say that all this suggests a design of sorts —without jumping immediately to a more far-flung bizarre conclusion resembling a psychotic hallucination of the “it’s turtles all the way down” religious denomination— is, I maintain, a modest suggestion, not at all unreasonable. It is one thing to cautiously suggest what I believe is a modest, secure, reasonable, and arguably self-evident cosmology, and quite another to leave this secure footing, and, out of an exaggerated sense of self-importance, charge forward in a flying leap of blind faith off the cliff into the abyss, following Kierkegaard’s lead, as the lemming minded would have us do, perhaps as a perverse form (or parody) of the ultimate existential statement. The rather immodest “batter my heart three personed God”[8] form of extremism is not what I have in mind:

That’s not what I meant at all.
That is not it at all.

The only Either/Or question I am proposing is either there is Purpose or there is not; and either way, we ought to behave as if there were, in which case the worst that can happen is that the Purpose was of our own existential making, with the alternative being that it came ready-made, which isn’t so bad either.

1.8 God.

I will be candid, and say that I find the term “God” to be useful, particularly in a treatise on ethics. I will use the word often, realizing, unfortunately, that it carries with it a lot of baggage. I am unable to easily dispense with the term; but, moreover, I don’t really want to either. It serves an invaluable function, and does, in fact, I maintain, have meaning. It has fallen out of favor and is generally not used by philosophers these days (outside of the seminaries/cemeteries). I believe the reasons for this are historical, because of all the abuse and misuse that has been made of it. Most right thinking intellectuals these days would maintain that they are atheists, and I sympathize with them. I do not, however, believe that their atheism is as thorough-going as they might suppose. I believe that religion, in most of its guises, tends to make atheists out of deep thinkers. If it weren’t for religion, I imagine there would be fewer intellectuals who call themselves atheists. Well, maybe someone can do a survey of some sort to prove my point, or maybe I am wrong. It’s just a guess, really.

To mention God here naturally requires quite a bit of additional commentary, even in this introductory essay, because the word itself means so many different things to so many different people that without a definition the word lacks all coherence. I am a deeply religious person, despite being an agnostic who could be accused of being an atheist of sorts. That last sentence should clue you in to the fact that what follows is not mainstream, though it really is. Ditto.

Let us see what we can agree on; or rather, if you will agree with me if I choose to define God for purposes of my treatise on ethics as having at least the following characteristics. This list could use a lot more work, but for now, I want to only impart a general feel for what I mean.

· God exists for us as an idea. I am not saying she is immaterial or material. You can fight that one out among yourselves if that interests you. I am just saying that, material or not, God is also an idea. Can you agree with that? You exist, but in my head you exist for me as an idea. Same thing with God, though not in the same sense.

· If one tries to think of the universe, and everything in it, as it exists and has existed both now and at all times in the past and future, in all its totality and with all its interconnections, one is thinking, in part, about what I call God. That may be too pantheistic for some, but I think that technically it isn’t pantheism, though I grant the analogy. The differences between my idea of God and Spinoza’s are not great; both of us are a little intoxicated by the idea, but differences there are.

· Whatever the principle is that is behind the animation of the universe, I call God. And why not? It assumes there is a principle; that is true. So I may not have the die hard atheist on board yet, but I should, because the universe is animated, and we have a sense of it, and that should be enough to begin with. You are still free to quibble.

· Metaphorically speaking (technically the only way one can ever speak about God), needless suffering —not all suffering is needless, but some is— is a bad thing (read displeases God). This may or may not be a purely human notion; I hope not. I confess, however, that I am now possibly doing more self-defining of the term than before; that is for you to judge. I note that I continue below in more or less this same vein.

· God prefers the good in place of the bad, all things being otherwise equal.

· To obey God is to share this preference for good and to act accordingly.

· The idea of God, as thus defined, is worthy of respect, of worship, and of obedience.

· God is greater than ourselves, and we should put God’s interest ahead of our own if we are capable of it and if they really do conflict.

Reminding myself that this is just an outline, I am about done with my pitch for bringing God back into a serious discourse on ethics, without having as a precondition that all the participants belong to the same denomination. I realize, however, that some of the half-dozen or so bullet points that I listed above would probably get me burned a couple of hundred years ago in Europe, and even today would get my head chopped off in many countries in the Medieval East. Many of the points could be hotly disputed by some, legitimately. Well, so be it. I am trying to be inclusive; if I fail with some, I take consolation in the hope that most people could carry on a conversation with me on the basis that we agree about my definition, so far as it goes. Now for the hard part.

Granted that God prefers the good and not the bad, how are we to know which is which? That is really what ethics is all about, even without bringing God into the picture. I want to bring God in, because we need something higher than our own self interest to aspire to if we hope to resolve disputes where my interest and yours differ. In such case, we have to have something greater than ourselves to appeal to. You could disagree with me on that; but, as I explained in my seminal (but never to be published work) Dialogue Between Two Solipsists, what would be the point in discussing the matter?

1.9 A God’s Eye View –

1.9(a) All I am Really Asking is For a Little Empathy.

Human beings come naturally to want what they think is good for them (though how or why they tend to think some things are desirable is a bizarre story in itself, best saved for later). Because we are social animals (Aristotle would say political animals —same thing, the word is Greek to me), we also have the capacity for empathy, to put ourselves in the shoes of others. If, as I advocate, we were to make ethical judgments based not on what is good for us and ours alone, but on what would be good for anyone, then we would at least have a basis for an discussion with anyone about what is truly ethical behavior. If a person were to base an ethical system on what is good for that person alone, meaningful dialog would be inherently pointless. The ethical system of a solipsist is of little interest to anyone else, as the solipsist should be the first to admit (only to him or her self of course).

There are systems of ethics that extend what is basically a solipsistic view point to include a few others. The philosophies of objectivism or enlightened self-interest of the Atlas Shrugged stripe perform this function. Although these systems serve only as a masquerade or a parody of what are at heart solipsistic ethical systems, they are an improvement, albeit a small one. Perhaps because misery loves company these people are at least advocating a system of ethics that favors a small group, which is an improvement over a system that benefits only oneself, a step in the right direction at least, and one that ironically can point to something more encompassing. Perhaps we want everyone to be ubermensche, but that is giving them the benefit of the doubt.

If we could be, if we were, anyone, and everyone, then how would we ourselves treat each other. This is a God’s eye view, and, as such, we are incapable of achieving it, but we can aspire to it, through our God-given sense of empathy, and we would then have the beginning of a system that would at least have the advantage of permitting a discussion with persons other than ourselves or who are clones of us.

1.9(b) If Not a God’s Eye View, at Least an Eye View Where the Misplaced Self-Interest of the Decision Maker is Not Affected by the Decision.

It would be nice if there were a way that we could vote or act on issues that would affect, say, a twin earth, like our earth in every way except for the absence of us, our race, our religion, our families, etc. Perhaps, our vote would then be based on what is good for the group, instead of on what is good for ourselves. I make this statement cautiously, because there is a lot to consider, much of which is not as obvious as the statement might at first suggest.

Depending on how you feel about God’s relationship to the system in place, you might disagree with my desire to approach meta-ethics if not from a disinterested perspective, at least from one lacking in material conflicts of interest, the good of the group versus the good of the individual. You might argue that the present system is designed to work best when everyone promotes his or her own self-interest, even if it “seems to be” to the detriment of society as a whole. I grant you that there may be something to that view, but although I am very open to a design theory, I do not think that removing a conflict of interest from an ethical decision is a bad idea. That is as gently as I can put it.

A vote to cut taxes, or realign a border, in my example, would be made on the basis of the good of all if you are a utilitarian; if you are not, then at least your vote would be based on some other criteria —just what you would substitute I cannot imagine— but presumably, at least it would not involve your own self-interest, or seeming self-interest. A substantial part of this treatise is an exploration of just what criteria ought to be used to make such decisions. We will give the deontologist a crack at the problem, but we will ultimately find that the deontologist if backed into a corner will inevitably be forced to resort to logic of the “because I say so” variety, or of the “what you propose is not perfect either” category, the latter argument being, of course, true. Later, later.

In fine, I believe it would be easier to ascertain what would be best for a group or society if the persons making the decisions were not directly affected by the decisions they made, or at least realized that they were not and voted accordingly. For example, let us say I am 80 years old. If I am asked to vote on whether or not to raise the national debt, I have much more reason to be in favor of it than would the 21 year old who is going to have to pay it off someday. If the question of raising the national debt were put to a group of people not directly affected by the decision, you might get a better decision, at least in theory.

There is an inherent absurdity in my example (which I am at pains to point out) of the desirability of removing self-interest from the voting process: Unless you are totally deluded you would realize that it is quite obvious that your single vote to cut or impose taxes, or to incorporate Northern Ireland into Eire, or to increase the national debt, for example, would not be determinative even under the present system, on the real earth, if put to a vote. So why posit a twin earth. The odd thing is that voters routinely line up and vote for their own real or perceived welfare even when there is no way in the world that the vote will actually change the outcome. Personally, I vote because I view it as a duty, my dharma, and not because of any other reason; but since, in this day and age, duty holds much less sway than in former times, it is more likely that it is an illusion of self-interest that sends most people to the polls. Logically, no person’s material self-interest will ever be directly advanced or retarded by any vote on anything that is not decided by that person’s one vote. In fact, if a person were truly selfish, the person would stay home and save the time and gas money of voting. But people often behave irrationally, and sometimes it is a good thing. If everyone were logical about voting mores, no one would vote, so it is a good thing that we act with our hearts instead of our heads at times. If not duty (which is why I believe people should vote), then why not the next best thing, which I call deluded self-interest (as opposed to enlightened self-interest).

What is interesting to me is that there are no doubt cases where people vote as if it would advance their material wealth, knowing that it won’t, and even where they will concede that the nation as a whole would probably be better off if the vote of the group goes the opposite way. A perfect example: a Republican friend of mine once told me that he thought Jim Wright’s policies were bad for the country, but he voted for him anyway because he was speaker of the House, and could make good things happen for Tarrant County. This response would not shock the consciences of very many; indeed, I doubt whether many people would find anything at remarkable in my friend’s response.

I maintain —and it is now demonstrably provable, since this was years ago, and the votes have been tallied— that when Jim Wright, a Democrat, was elected, it was by more than one vote; and therefore, whether my friend, in the secret chambers of the voting booth, acting alone, with only his conscience and butterfly ballet for companionship, voted for or against Jim Wright, the outcome of the election would have been the same. Hence if my friend really believed that Jim Wright was bad for the country (as is any tax and spend liberal Democrat, according to my friend) but good for the person’s home county (which was probably more obviously true in this case), a vote against him, since it would not count and no one would know, would be the cheapest moral act that the person could make. It doesn’t get any cheaper. This realization —that a perfectly normal person can vote contrary to what the person believes to be the good of the nation, simply because that vote, if effective, would be materially slightly better for the person voting, when the person also knows that the person’s vote has no possibility whatsoever of being effective, and that no one would be in the slightest surprised by such behavior, if it were disclosed— gives a powerful insight into the moral dimension of the human psyche, one not to be dismissed blithely.

Recognizing that people generally vote for what would be in their own self-interest if their vote was determinative, fully recognizing that their vote is never determinative if they gave it a moment’s thought, I must search further than the voting booth if I want a perspective less ridden by conflicts of interest, if I want to find a meta-ethical solution to any thorny situation. Some post-modernists would say that the search is in vain. Perhaps might makes right (as Hobbes and Thrasymachus maintained); that is not a new idea. I suppose that even if right does make right, it is better for people on television and in the press to square off and argue a case in ethical terms —even when it is clear that self-interest, perhaps deluded self-interest is what is really driving the argument all along—, than it would be to admit the truth. My preference would be to at least aspire to view the situation as it would look to someone whose self-interest, ethnic identity, class, tax bracket, etc., were not involved. The viewpoint to which I aspire may have something in common with Rawl’s veil of ignorance,[9] where people vote for future laws before they know whether the law will favor them or not.

As a matter of social practice my aspiration is probably too utopian, and is impractical as a day to day solution for solving problems. The world is far too complex. Since there being no twin earth, my so-called solution is surely unavailing as a practical matter. Moreover, the system we have in the United States works pretty well, despite its conflicts and absurdities. But as a meta-ethical system for ascertaining values, the perspective that should be adopted, if only in theory, must be one taken from the viewpoint of someone who has no conflict of interest. In the real world, people can continue to use ethical language to promote what is really a question of power and self-interest, deluded or real, as the only viable solution to the really big conflicts. However, I believe civilization will be advanced if at least some people recognize that psychological reasons are more often than not the true underpinnings supporting political, societal and ethical positions, and that the language of ethics is used to support a person’s true motives, motives that the person is probably unaware of at all, to be sure.

Look at the sanctimonious language with which so many self-respecting, well-intentioned Serbs used to justify treating the Albanians worse than cattle. In some cases Milosevic justified his behavior by citing events which took place in the 14^th century for heaven’s sake. I can tell you, no one in his or her right mind that was not a Serb would have been persuaded for a moment that the reasons proffered for the subjugation of the Albanians excused the Serbian conduct toward them. Ditto toward the Bosnian Muslims.

We ought to try harder than we do to identify those situations where other people are taking the ethical positions that they are taking for reasons other than the ones they are advancing, and subject those positions to arguments not based on what is good for one group or another, but best for all concerned. This may be hard to do, especially since we know for certain that a person who makes a strident, impassioned, ethical argument often does not have the foggiest notion that the reason the person believes the way the person does, has less to do with the arguments made in justification than with who the person’s parent’s were. At the moment I am thinking of India and Pakistan.

I watched a talk show the other day that took place among a group of students in Washington D.C. The topic was the Arab-Israeli conflict. It could have been India and Pakistan, or Serbs and Croats, or Tutsis and Hutus, or Ibos, Hausas and Yorubas. It just so happened that it was Arabs and Jews this time. Naturally, the whole discussion was a debate framed in ethical terms about what was right and what was wrong, which is as it should be. I am not a complete relativist, and I do believe there is an ethical dimension to that conflict, but, surprise, surprise, it just so happened that invariably the ethical conclusions that each participating student thought to be ineluctable, invariably coincided with that person’s ethnicity. That is pathetic. It may be that this is just the way it works, and I should just accept it, but I don’t. It looks ridiculous to see a debate like that acted out as if all the ethical rhetoric were merely for show. But it was not for show. These people really believe that the correct ethical viewpoint just happens to coincide with their upbringing, and what are the odds of that? If we are talking about meta-ethics, metaphysical right and wrong, these coincidences would not exist. Have I said anything that is not obviously true?

This is another case where true self-interest would probably solve the problem, but what we get is deluded self-interest at best. If I were looking down on the Middle East from on high, and my name was not Allah or Jehovah, I think that, given human nature and the historical situation, I would say the Jews are there, and they are not going to leave voluntarily. In their case you can make a credible argument that real self-interest is involved in the decision to live in Israel, although I would not be so sure of that. In any case, it is clear that the Arabs have not improved their lot by making sure that this sore never heals. In sum, I think I would conclude dispassionately that if the Arabs were successful in forcing the Israelis to leave, it would be bad not only for humankind as a whole,[10] but almost certainly for the Arabs themselves, though they wouldn’t know it.

I don’t have to do a title search on that real estate to determine whose land it really is. It is really nobody’s, except whoever has the strength to keep it. Allah didn’t give it to the Arabs and Jehovah didn’t give it to the Jews, though that is a convenient excuse. When in doubt, blame God. Not good enough.

It doesn’t make it right that Israel is there, but it doesn’t make it wrong either. Their presence is the result of historical forces beyond the control of all of us, and there is no turning the clock back to the 7^th century (or to the 1^st) to correct the situation. So to both sides I would say make the best of what is ultimately a bad situation for everyone. I have no doubt but that Israel would give up the occupied territories and live in peace with a Palestinian state next door, if only Israel could remain secure in the process. As long as that is too much to ask, then there is little hope for discussing that conflict as a question of situational ethics, and like most other major conflicts, it will have to be resolved by force, even though reason is clearly adequate to the task.

1.10 The All Important Doctrine of No-Self.

Perhaps the most fundamental tenant of my philosophy, from which my praxis is derived, is that the self is a psychological construct, which has no metaphysical content. I do not deny that the term has meaning, primarily psychological, nor do I deny its utility, but I insist that it is an illusion, an important illusion, no doubt, one without which society could not function, nor could the individual with whom a “self” is associated function as a coherent ongoing aspect of consciousness. I merely maintain that from the view point of metaphysics the self has no absolute reality separate from the rest of the universe. There are many thought experiments that I believe will lead the open-minded to share my view. Nevertheless, I recognize that this will be the most controversial part of my philosophy, and I expect very few Westerners will be comfortable to the notion, despite the evidence.

Consider Theseus’ ship. Every few years a plank or two would be replaced. At some point, no part of the original ship was left. Was it still Theseus’ ship? If not, when did it cease to be. I believe it remained Theseus’ ship because the only way to distinguish the ship, even when brand new, from the rest of the universe is to adopt a convention in the minds of people who use the words “Theseus’ ship.” The ultimate reality of the ship is embodied in our minds rather than in the molecules that make up what we denominate as Theseus’ ship, and this is proven if one agrees that in its final state, after all of the planks, sails, oars, etc. have been replaced, the vessel is still Theseus’ ship. And if one disagrees that it is any longer Theseus’ ship after the every part has been replaced, then one must give a coherent definition of just when the ship ceased to be Theseus’ —after two-thirds was replaced?— and I assume that any such definition would be sufficiently arbitrary such that my point would survive.

What about the human body. If we remove cells from the brain, one cell at a time, at what point would the person whose cell’s were being removed cease to be (a) a “self” at all, or (b) the same self as before the operation. I assume that these questions cannot be answered, even in theory, which I believe tells us something important.

I imagine that if each cell were replaced by an artificially created identical cell that most of us would agree that the “self” survives. I would agree, since I believe that the self is a psychological construct, and, as such, it does survive. This example is not trivial, because, in fact, every cell that existed in your body at the time of your birth has been replaced, if you are old enough to read this.

For this reason, most people would argue that the “self’ is immaterial; that it is separate from the body, and perhaps can live without it. I see no reason whatsoever for believing that the “self” can live without a body of sorts, other than the fact that it is a comforting thought, and I don’t consider that a good reason. All the “selves,” of whose existence I am quite sure, have or had bodies associated with them, more or less; but, again I maintain that the notion of a “self” is an idea. Now the precise relationship of ideas to matter has proved a tough nut to crack. Without trying to crack that nut here, I merely state, by way of introduction to the rest of this treatise, that the self is an idea, and that ideas are real, but that it is an idea whose reality is no different from the idea that there is one self of which that which we call ourselves is but an aspect. There are also multiple selves of which the one self is but an aspect. However, I am not even insisting that the idea of the one universal self is fundamental to metaphysical reality (or even essential to my system of meta-ethics); but I would insist, to put it differently, that the idea of a universal self of which we are an aspect is a particularly powerful idea, as ideas go.

Although the doctrine of the no-self is at the heart of my philosophy and personal belief system, my system of meta-ethics, my praxis, does not depend on it. It does depend on the psychological state of empathy being shared more or less by the members of a functioning society, whether or not I am right that this empathetic state points to a higher reality, a reality in which Brahman and Atman really are one in the same.

One final thought experiment. Instead of removing cells from a brain, consider the effect of taking two persons and switching their brain cells, or of artificially duplicating them. If that were possible, where would the self be? In the first person, whose brain has been replaced; or in the second person, where the brain ended up? And if the latter, then what about all the cases in between, if the exchange of brain cells takes place slowly. It is no use saying that, because we do not have the technology, the conundrum posed does not exist. It does exist under most ways of viewing the self. In my system, however, the example poses no problem at all. Give me that at least.

There is a Buddhist doctrine, which I do not completely understand yet, called the doctrine of the “no-self,” which I would expect to be similar to my own. However, since many Buddhists also believe in reincarnation, my notion of the self (or what it is not), and theirs, must be completely different, since I do not think there is any self to be reincarnated. Perhaps it is a Zen thing; or maybe a true understanding of reincarnation is that all things are incarnated in all things. Anyway, if there is no real self, what is there to be reincarnated? And besides, if you have no memory of your “former self,” what could it possibly mean to say that you are the same person?

Even if you had knowledge or a memory of a former-self, in what sense would any part of “reality” be different if that knowledge or memory were false but neither you nor anyone else would ever know it to be false? People do have both true and false memories, memories that either do or do not correspond, in various degrees to events in the physical world. If one had a memory of a reincarnated former self, there is a sense in which we could say the memory corresponded or did not with events outside the head of the person claiming the memory. But just because a person has a memory which either corresponds or does not correspond to the situation outside the person’s head, in what metaphysical sense is it meaningful to say that the person who has the memory is the person from whom it is claimed the memory came? If it is meaningful to make such a statement, in what sense does it make any difference whether the memory is true, false or implanted? In what sense is the postulated identity between the present and the former self meaningfully changed if it turns out that the memory was false, particularly if no one knows it is false? Since, so far, it has proved to be impossible for anyone to be in a position to distinguish whether such a memory of a former life was true or a figment, there can be no difference between whether it is true or a figment, in which case the notion that it is true is meaningless, in addition to probably being wrong as an empirical matter. I hold this reasoning to be true not only with respect to the idea of reincarnation, but with respect to the alleged enduring unreincarnated self: It is a useful and meaningful psychological notion, and it would be fatuous to deny that as a psychological notion the self exists; but metaphysically it must be an illusion, for the reasons just given.

My own strongly held view is that I am not the same person that I was 50 years ago. I cannot even call upon memories at this point, because I have no memories of when I was one-year old. Every single atom in my body has been discarded and replaced, or so I am told, and not even the cells are the same. So in what sense am I the same person? I do not deny that I am the same person, in a sense. But in a sense I am also you (and you are me and we are all together — I am the walrus, etc.). I probably have more in common with you than with “myself” 50 years ago, or even 10.

Having asked in what sense am I the same person now as I was at age one, we can move forward, in my favorite reductio ad absurdum fashion, and ask what about age two, age 20, ten minutes ago? (This is why the abortion issue, is not a logical one.) I share more atoms with myself ten minutes ago than 50 years ago, true; since 50 years ago I had none of the same atoms, or even cells (I think). The whole subject of Cartesian dualism, which maintains that mind and body are completely separate is a debate still raging after all these centuries. Even (sic) since Ryle,[11] there has been much added to the literature that is worthwhile on the subject.[12] If, however, we are going to maintain that I am the same person as I was the moment before the last time I shared an atom with myself, then I suppose mind and matter must be separate in some sense; but if not, then the problem disappears.

My point is that I think the idea of “self” is an illusion. Eastern philosophers would largely agree. Now, illusions usually have some relation to reality, so saying something is an illusion is not to say it is not real. This is an introduction, so I must restrain the temptation to expatiate here, but I want to be clear that I believe that the notion that I am somehow completely separate from everyone and everything else is more psychological than actual (whatever that means). (The subject needs much further elucidation; there may be no way around it. Perhaps when my thoughts have clarified, I can give a properly succinct introduction.)

If it is true, as I maintain, that I am not the same person I was two seconds ago, except as a psychological notion, then why cannot I not extrapolate from that notion to the metaphysical notion that my relationship to my former self is at least similar to my relationship to you or vice-versa? In that sense our separateness is one of degree only, and then, perhaps, a degree of illusion.

1.11 Lucid Dreaming as a Possible Paradigm For the Generation of the Universe.

Our revels now are ended: these our actors
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yes, and all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wrack behind: We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.[13]

I will try to restrain myself from the temptation to elaborate more than is warranted in what is only supposed to be an introduction, realizing that in the last subtopic I failed miserably in that endeavor

When we dream we create a semi-self-contained universe of sorts, complete with discreet (or so it seems) conscious being(s) who participate in the dream as if they were separated within it, when, in fact, we know when we wake (or even while we are dreaming, if the dream is lucid) that we are at once the whole picture and at the same time only a character in our own drama. It seems to me that this experience, which everyone has nightly, ought to be taken seriously as a candidate for a paradigm for how the universe might itself be being generated.

An anecdote: When I was actively trying to promote lucid dreaming —something I do not actively do anymore because it is too exhausting, though it still occurs naturally— back in that uproarious Spring of 1971, the longest 3 months of my life, I had a lucid dream in which I was sitting around talking to some of my friends, and in that dream I explained to the other charters that they were part of my dream, which was okay with them, but when I further explained that they were not real, and that I was the only member of our little rap session who was actually conscious, my friend Rocky looked at me and gave me a hearty Rocky laugh and told me clearly, not in these exact words, but with such good natured certainty and forcefulness that I will never forget it, that I was once again full of crap, and that of course the other members of the dream were independently conscious too. I still don’t know whether this was true or not, but I strongly suspect that at some level it is, or, at the very least, could be. There is certainly no reason to rule out the idea. Again, my paradigm: One dreamer, many participants in the dream, each of whom thinks he or she is separate from the other characters (which is true, in a sense), but it turns out that another entity is dreaming all of the characters into existence, that although the dreamer may assume a certain distinct conscious perspective from time to time, the separate conscious existence of the dreamer from the other characters dreamed has to be an illusion of sorts, since upon waking we know for a fact that one dreamer dreamed them all, at least in a sense. Someone could be dreaming the dreamer, and there is no reason to think that that someone could be dreaming the entity dreaming the dreamer, and so on. Lots of possibilities here, all virtually never explored in the philosophical literature.

For starters, compare the lucidity of a human dream with that of a mouse. I don’t want to denigrate mice, but my guess is that if our dreams are irrational, a mouse’s dreams are even more so. Any conversations a mouse is having with other mice during a lucid mouse dream are likely to be, how shall I put it, less sophisticated than human dreams, on average. Likewise if there is a dreamer who is to us as we are to mice, except perhaps a trillion times more so, consider what dreams would be possible.

What I have proffered for consideration above is, of course, mere speculation. But the fact remains that we have this nightly experience in which we create worlds of which we are at once all and only a part. That is a fact; not speculation.

1.12 Free-will and Unjust Desert.

There is a difference between psychological/sociological notions of desert, and meta-physical notions of the same. It is the job of philosophers to note this distinction, but my reading in the field leads me to believe that philosophers are almost as bad as the general public in confusing the two, all to my great surprise. It is the job of the philosopher, after all, to distinguish between those psychological factors, which cause us to hate and blame, and the sociological utility of enjoying hating and blaming, from the metaphysical question of whether this hating and blaming and enjoying it is, philosophically and metaphysically speaking, justified abstractly, if all of the facts were known. That job has been largely abdicated by all but the deepest thinkers, and I find this very depressing. The psychological/sociological realm is for the psychologists and sociologists. The metaphysical is for the philosophers, informed by the findings of psychology, sociology, biochemistry, neurology, evolutionary biology, and all of the other sciences, which tell us that our psychological predispositions and folkloric belief systems, do not necessarily accord with the way the world really is. Though these psychological predispositions and belief systems may be suggestive of the way the world is composed, being such an integral part of it, they do not tell the whole story. Why this distinction is not noticed or more prominently made in the contemporary philosophical literature is both an amazement and a profound disappointment to me. After all and again, it is the job of the philosopher, and of virtually no one else, except perhaps theologians, to make these distinctions.

If my insistence that the “self” is an illusion was controversial, I suspect that even fewer people are going to have any truck with my notion that the idea of “free-will” is an illusion as well. The two ideas are related.

Both ideas are supported by logic, but they are both contrary to our psychology, which is why the logic gets swept under the rug. In a war between (a) logic and (b) the psychological ideas that evolution has instilled to cause our society to cohere and function efficiently, one can fairly expect logic to finish last. The subject of religion again comes immediately to mind. The fact that different religious traditions have reached dramatically different conclusions about the structure of metaphysical reality does not prevent persons of high IQ from being fully participating members, even though, as a matter of logic, it is impossible that all, or even more than one, of the religions of which all these smart people are variously members could be true.

As much as I want to be brief here, and to save for later the more thorough treatment, I will not be as brief as I would like. Here is as brief an introduction as I am at the moment capable of making:

I firmly believe that the notions of free-will, retribution, and “condigned” punishment are psychological notions only. I want to say that they have nothing at all to do with metaphysics, but I will defer my final judgment on that for now, except to say that right now I believe they do not (have anything to do with metaphysics).

I believe that free-will is often confused with simple volition (or simply willing). I see no reason, other than a psychological one, to bring metaphysical indeterminate freedom into the picture. It is true that some forms of willing are subject to more or less prior deliberation, and are more or less in accord with our reflective desires (intent), but I just don’t see the causal chain breaking at any point. Furthermore, I am not too hung up on the causal chain. The chain could be indeterminate or even random, and in some case quantum physics tell us that it is. That changes nothing.

Martin Luther’s famous statement “Here I stand and can do no other,” which Dennett is fond of quoting,[14] was presumably in accord with Luther’s prior deliberations and his intent; but could he really have done no other, without something in the universe, in his head, something somewhere, being different than it in fact was? To answer “yes” to that question, and then to try to explain the answer logically, is quite an undertaking, given that separating logic from cause and effect is very difficult. Both Hume and Kant and others since have had much to say about cause and effect that is interesting here. Okay, so talk about it about it empirically. Does that work? One can discuss cause and effect in terms of constant conjunction and get along reasonably, if one is so inclined. But “free-will” presupposes that the conjunction is not even constant. Strike two.

Speaking of causality and constant conjunction, I am compelled to dispel forever the confusion between the two. The fact that the yellow striped pescatorie fish spawns every year on the first full moon in May, and that rugby team in New Haven also schedules an annual game with Greensborough on the same day, is an example of constant conjunction, not causality. There is a difference.

For almost three quarters of a century, a mainstream tenet of quantum physics has been that cause and effect do not apply at subatomic levels. But one can talk about quantum physics cogently, because even if it is weird, it is at least mathematical and quite predictable, and therefore not entirely beyond the limits of our intelligence to grasp and to talk about logically. There are fewer psychological factors at work here. Unlike the “threats to free-will” that you will encounter ad nauseum in the literature, you seldom see quantum physics discussed as a “threat to causality.” That quantum physics is a threat to causality of sorts has not been overlooked, but fighting words and effrontery are largely absent when quantum physics is the subject. What you tend to find instead is curiosity and amazement. That should tell you something. Free-will, however, is noticeably a different matter. Even if the notion of quantum indeterminism chafes a bit, we can live with it. Actually there is something magical about it that is refreshing, which somehow gives us confidence that there are still principles at work that we don’t understand, and which point to a more profound reality than the everyday one we are used to.

The free-will debate is not so free of emotion. I suspect that the reason so many people are obsessed with insisting that they are simultaneously undetermined and self-determined is best explained by their desire to feed their ego’s craving for a sense of self-importance and separateness from everything else in the world, and by the perverse pleasure people take in blaming others who don’t measure up. It is all very smug. Human, all too Human. The principles at work in the concept of willing —a phenomena real and amazing enough in its own right— are sufficiently puzzling and interesting enough without adding to the mystery by interjecting other principles even more mysterious (i.e., the principles at work in the notion that the willing is also free, uncaused, indeterminate, and blame- or praise-worthy, all at the same time), simply to preserve an exaggerated sense of self-importance, as if this exaggerated sense were a necessary condition for making it through the day, and without which all life would be meaningless. The assumption that the will is free and uncaused, is, in fact, the working assumption of a fair number of philosophers, in addition to being the accepted dogma of virtually all others —excluding Calvinists, of which, outside the museum, few are left, thank God.

Do we “understand” the concept of will, of conscious volition? Do we “understand” what it even means to say that a person can think that he or she will do something, and then do it? Well, I think we have a feel for it, at the very least. We know that we often have reasons (causes?) for willing this or that: some of them good reasons, some of them not, some of them compulsions, some of them unconscious. Why, despite this knowledge, do most people assume, without the necessity for reflection, that causality is simply not ultimately involved here?

I believe that in this area people jump to a conclusion that is inconsistent with everything they know about the way the world works in every other area that science has touched upon, mainly because the conclusion (free-will indeterminacy) is consistent with the way we want things to be. Perhaps it is because for some bizarre reason I was not born with that need (or at least the need is not very strong, or because I was baptized Presbyterian), that I think I am looking at the question more objectively. Perhaps I am wrong. I intend to keep looking yet.

Volition is a concept difficult enough to grasp, but at least we know enough of psychology and neuroscience to suppose that there are reasons (causes) for at least 99% of what we do, even if we are not always aware of them or always able to identify precisely what they are. Why complicate the matter by assuming that there is some small part of volition that cannot be explained in terms of causes? And even if it were true, as I think plausible, that some neuro-physiological activity is completely random, or that quantum principles make it unpredictable, why call that “free.” I would just call it “random,” and the fact that our behavior may be occasionally caused by random events does not have any profound metaphysical implications for me or for my theory of meta-ethics.

What reasons are there for assuming that all of our behavior is NOT inter-connected with the universe in so many various and intricate ways that if we were capable of knowing them all (even the quantumly random ones) we could explain all of our actions in terms of them, in theory? Why do we seriously put forth as an “explanation” that there is no “explanation,” or that the explanation cannot be made in terms of cause and effect, when cause and effect offers itself as an otherwise obvious and simple solution? In just what terms, what language, what means of communication, can undetermined free-will be explained?

I have now read thousands of pages of contemporary philosophical literature on this subject, and am quite surprised to find most of the literature sadly wanting. My briefly made objections, however, do not do justice to the other side. That task will definitely take more work, and much of this work is in fact devoted to it.

For now I will merely remark that it is excusable when non-philosophers get all exercised whenever they encounter a determinist. (It is not much of a problem, since such encounters are exceedingly rare.) Non-philosophers don’t have time for dispassionate judgment in these matters. They need to get on with the normal duties of society, which require blame, punishment and self-congratulation, in order to function smoothly. Introspection, following the causal chain to the point where it can no longer be followed by anyone other than God, would just get in the way, and would not make life any easier. But at some level of society, there is a need for at least some people to understand that there is a difference between the psychological, societal notions of blame, self-praise, and condigned reward and punishment, and the metaphysical notion of the same, of which I suspect there is none.

Even if uncaused blameworthy freedom exists, it cannot be discussed very cogently, because the concept, like Kant’s noumenon, cannot be grasped or directly apprehended. Kant himself called free-will an antimony. Indeed it may be altogether incoherent, except as a transcendental deduction of some sort. However, I doubt that there is anything transcendental about it. Rather, I suspect that it is a psychological notion that serves a useful social purpose, and that if it has metaphysical meaning that meaning has so far eluded the best minds that have claimed to have tackled the problem.

Deducing the existence of free-will transcendentally, in the Kantian mode, is not even attempted these days. “Free” will (as opposed to just plain old willing) is more often simply asserted as a given (even in the philosophical literature), without which blame would be inappropriate; and since that might lead to all sorts of psychological discomfort, it follows that it exists. This may be an empirical proof, of sorts, but it certainly lacks the sublimity that one would hope to find in an explanation of a subject which must be either more recondite than the solution suggests or much simpler still; else philosophers wouldn’t still be seriously discussing it after all these millennia. And yet you see precisely this kind of explanation from the free-will advocates all the time. And have, for thousands of years, up to this very day. I said that one would expect the solution to the free-will phenomena to be more recondite than is suggested by the “explanation” that it is necessary for our psychological well-being. There is of course an alternative that is not recondite at all, and which in fact is simple and obvious, and solves all of the metaphysical problems easily. Its only drawback is the one I have been mentioning the most often.

I believe that we are the way we are for reasons; that if you were I, you would be me. It may turn out to be just that simple. Therefore, although I may hate someone; may even want to see them suffer (Hitler?), I cannot help believing that I should not hate anyone or want anyone to suffer, unless some useful purpose would be promoted thereby. Since it probably is useful to hate Hitler, at least on one level (the psychological),[15] I am not opposed to it. But in considering meta-ethics, my personal psychological predispositions simply must be identified as such, and their utility weighed. The temptation to believe in metaphysical guilt and punishment, for its own sake, is a temptation that a philosopher should resist (though, surprisingly, few do). It is alright for the masses. If they get pleasure from watching a serial killer die (I certainly do), or a really bad person being tortured in prison (perhaps he sold marijuana to a 17 year old child, or did something much worse), then why deny them that simple pleasure? Just because it is sadistic? Sadism in moderation must be okay, else we would be concerned about the pleasure we all feel when a bad person suffers. Did Nietzsche say it first?

One nice side-effect of discarding the conventional notion of free-will and blame is that you no longer have reason to hate anyone. It may be easier to forgive them if, as Jesus said, they really know not what they are doing, and I maintain that no one does, really, though they may seem to. Like so much else, it is a question of degree, which we treat as absolutes, as a matter of convenience. How much they knew or did not know about what they were doing is not clear from the Gospels, but in any case, we are told that Jesus asked his father (i.e., asked himself, if you subscribe to the Nicene Creed[16]) to forgive them. Should we not try to do the same? We are told that God is forgiving. My theory would explain why.

Of course, on the down side, the pleasure we get in hating others and in watching them suffer (assuming it is “deserved”) could be seriously diminished under the forgive them approach, i.e. not blaming them for what they don’t know, or if all the circumstances were fully comprehended, were incapable of knowing. That is the down side. However, none of us is perfect, and we can expect to have the best of both worlds. I myself believe that people do things for reasons (for causes; things are caused, in effect), and yet I still enjoy it when bad people are caught, beaten up, made to suffer, etc. This is why Bill O’Reilly claims to be against the death penalty by the way: a quick death is too good for them. It is why I might be in favor of it, theoretically. I am human, and though I may be incapable of forgiving some people, I somehow expect that God can and does, and that the metaphysical plane is indeed different from the one in which we interact socially.

1.13 Recognizing Our Limitations.

Above all, we have to recognize our limitations. We can look everywhere we can for guidance, but we must realize what a small part we play in the big picture. For us to try to play too big a part is doomed by the law of unintended consequences. Whether God is benevolent or not, we simply are inadequate to the task of radically changing the order of society to make it better. We don’t know enough. It has to take its own shape. All we can do is try to smooth over the spots that are obviously rough.

I realize that my utilitarian world view, based on empathy and identification of the true self with all that is life, relying on that view to guide meta-ethical decisions, realizing that there may be a source for our deontological, normative rules of behavior, but that those rules have reasons behind them that make them useful, but not to be made idols of, is not the stuff of which mass movements are made. We are, individually, incapable of assigning utility values to each and every act we perform. We have to rely on Nature, on God, to make the most of everyday decisions. But, whether God is a Purpose that created us, or we just happen to find ourselves in this extremely absurd and unlikely situation and have to invent him; either way the smoothing process will work much more effectively if a few more people in decision making positions were brought up (socialized) to love each other as they will in most cases untaught love themselves. There is a Purpose, whether metaphysical or mundane, even in selfishness; but we could use less and less of it as society grows and matures. I am certainly not concerned that my advocacy of a selfless God’s eye view on ethics and religion will start a mass movement with the unintended consequence that life will be worse. The world is not (has not been) constructed to allow that to happen at this stage.

Our religious leaders of the past, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, have all pointed us in the direction of universal respect for all persons, and even other animals. To be sure, the message has been (i) imperfect, sadly mixed to begin with, and (ii) unforgivably mangled and perverted later on —the last assertions being undoubtedly true of all religions, the first ones true in only one case at best, as a matter of formal logic. Nevertheless, I believe that on the whole we were being pointed in the right direction, even if few had ears to hear. If we choose to interpret our religious traditions intelligently, and not make idols or Gods out of the denominational tradition into which we were accidentally born or chose, we will at least have the necessary conditions for aspiring to an understanding of a God that is more than human. If people are incapable of realizing God unless she is in human form, that can be forgiven, and perhaps for a while even helpful, and in some sense true. As Paul said, we are all children of God, whether begotten or made. I have no quarrel with that, but we really must strive to do better than to think of God as being made in our own image, even if it is we who are inventing him. It is time to put away our childish ways. However, we must never confuse ourselves with God in the process of coming to a fuller understanding. We are mere specks of dust, perhaps appareled in celestial light, perhaps with divine sparks fallen from the pleroma, left over from some sort of fall, still trapped, waiting to be liberated or smoked; but under every possible view of the situation, the whole process is much bigger than we are, much bigger I dare say than we realize unless we force ourselves reflect upon the real situation.

1.14 East and West and Their Twain.

I have spent must time reading Eastern philosophy and religion, and have a great respect for it. Without it, our picture of the world would be further out of balance than it actually is. However, I am firmly grounded in the Western traditions of empiricism (I betray my English-Scottish ancestry) and rationalism (I betray my continental ancestry). If I also respect religions of nature then I betray my Native American ancestry. Hell, I am, after all a 10^th generation American, and, as such, there is little ancestry I cannot claim, if it suits me, and I expect my grandchildren will be able to claim the remainder of the races. Further, some of my best friends are . . . .

For whatever reason, then, I do, in fact, find much of Eastern thought to be ungrounded, even if true, just as I find the Medieval schoolmen to have been very well grounded, and clearly wrong. But my sympathy is with the well-grounded, preferably not wrong. What other choice do we have? If I adopt the Zen tradition whole-heartedly, I really can say any damn thing I want, and it doesn’t have to even make sense to anyone. What is the point of that? In the Zen tradition, the point is to cause the novice or acolyte to learn to break free of the traditional ways of looking at the world, in order to better see its paradoxical aspects. As far as this goes, I am in sympathy. But I refuse to abandon reason altogether, for the obvious reason that there is no substitute for it, and for the less obvious reason that all who attempt to show its inadequacies invariably resort to reason to prove the point. To assert that there is no truth is either a true statement or not. Right? Like Pilot, I am more interested in what it is. In any case, I draw inspiration from the East when I confess that whatever is said to be true can only be more or less so. True truth is probably ineffable, but that does not prohibit us from talking about it rationally, of observing it empirically in some aspect or another.

1.15 The Sum of the Parts.

How is it that anyone can ever say anything sensible, given the limitations of language and thought? We always fall short of the mark, and if we did not tell half truths we would have to be strangely silent, or “savagely still.”

Footsteps shuffled on the stair.

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

Spread out in fiery points

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

How can so many intelligent people believe so many disparate and contradictory things? The alternative would be to believe nothing, to remember nothing, to say nothing. “I remember those were pearls that were his eyes.”

Water tastes best when one is thirsty. That is just a fact. Thirsty is less pleasant that quenching. That is just the way it is. Could it have been otherwise? Voltaire may have been a little too flippant when he created Dr. Pangloss to discredit Leibnitz, but I understand the temptation to which he succumbed. If it were in fact the case (I am not making it, but I see it as a possibility) that the sum of pain in the world is equaled or surpassed by pain’s opposite, then the theodicy problem would certainly be less serious than it would be otherwise.

1.16 This World is Not of Our Making.

To say that this world is not of our making is to state a truism. We all know that, but I do not think we often realize it, which is to say that we do not appreciate the fact as thoroughly as we ought or as we would if we reflected on our state more often. Step back a moment and look at how the world in all its aspects is organized. We each play a part in that organization, but the part is infinitesimally small, much smaller, I suspect, than we like to think or often do.

Try to appreciate the consequences of this observation of the obvious. It means that virtually everything that we try to change, try to control, try to manipulate, has a life of its own, independent of us. Hence, our ability to understand what it is that we are trying to control, and our ability to affect it, is undoubtedly much weaker than we are likely to assume unreflectively. Moreover, our very actions in trying to affect and control the world and our society are themselves the result of a complex process that is much greater than us.

These remarks, I trust, are not as controversial as others I have made. However, the controversial positions that I take largely flow from the simple recognition of our own insignificance. Again, psychological factors are at work to give us all an exaggerated sense of our own self-importance. Hence, most people believe, for no convincing reasons other than that it is comforting, most of things that I do not: (a) that they have a real metaphysical self that separates them profoundly from everything and everyone else in the universe, a self that has survived intact from the moment of conception (or birth) to the present, even though every molecule in their bodies has been replaced and even though they have no memories (other than imagined) of life before the age of three and many more memories of things that never happened at all (or so psychologists tell us), (b) that that self is so resilient —having like Theseus’ boat survived its material replacement through life— that it will survive the death of the body, (c) that the self (or soul), like God, is undetermined and is ultimately perpetually and metaphysically responsible for everything that it is, (d) that the self (or soul) is not God’s work, which is to say that it is not the product of the universe and all of the forces at play in the universe that would otherwise connect everything with everything, and that therefore each of us is free to will without cause, despite the evidence of biochemistry, psychology, genetics and common sense, which all suggest the contrary, (e) that, as a consequence of the self being metaphysically real, free, and independent of the universe (or God) which created it, persons should be either tortured or benefited commensurate with their actions, not necessarily for the good of society, but as a matter of metaphysical desert, whether or not the torture or benefit has any salutary consequences or not, and (f) inherent in the fabric of the universe are a series of moral rules that are not derived from anything at all, other than perhaps by magical divination or revelation itself derived inexplicably, and which are not to be judged by the effect or utility of their execution, no matter what the consequences. Is something good because God says it is, or does God say it because it is good?

I would not want to eliminate the sense of self-importance that has led most people to believe the things I don’t, enumerated above, even if I could. I would actually encourage most people to go on believing these things, if it makes them happy. I merely think that the exaggerated sense of personal self-importance, which most people feel, is in need of a general tempering. My hope is modest. I realize that we are very limited in our ability to appreciate the nature of reality and our role in it, and that as a result, we must of necessity live unreflecting lives just to get through the day, trusting that God has worked out the details, if not perfectly, then at least adequately enough to justify our continued existence. I, myself, believe something along these lines. However, I also think that the world would be more consistent with God’s plan if at least the people who profess to be philosophers would try to recognize more clearly “what is really going on” behind the shroud that the ego lays over the soul to protect it from seeing what we are actually doing to each other; and that these philosophers would thereby be in a better position to in a small way steer us in a more sound direction, by encouraging others to occasionally make a few decisions, in appropriate circumstances, on the basis of something other than the psychological reasons that necessary dominate the less important activities of daily life, to the end of gaining a fuller, if always incomplete, understanding of the world and of God’s plan (if any) for it. We are not designed by nature to be conscious every day of “what is really going on” around us, the causes behind the causes. From our earthly eyes the Kingdom will always be obscured; but we do have the power to step-back and disengage, if only for a moment, and look at the world from a viewpoint that is not exclusively our own, from a vantage not quite as narrow as the one from which we are by nature most inclined to view it.

1.17 Do We Participate in The Madness or Not? Krishna Says Yes. I am Not So Sure?

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna did not want to go to war, he did not want to kill his former friends and relatives. Krishna then more or less persuades Arjuna that (a) he really has no choice, his dharma requires his participation; and (b) it makes no difference anyway. Admittedly, this is an oversimplification, but it is not far from the mark. In a nuclear age, I find Krishna’s advice less than fully consoling. At times I find that what the joker said to the thief is a philosophy which more accurately reflects the situation. Still, as we prepare to invade Iraq, I wonder, as I sit here on Sunday, October 31, 2002.

Just how bad are things? What is your assessment? The problem, again, is point of view. If you are relatively comfortable, you probably think things are not all that bad. If you are miserable, you probably think life is. If you are comfortable, you will tend to forget the point of view of those who are not, and vice-versa. The first problem is to step-back and assess things dispassionately, from a larger, more encompassing point of view, and that can only be attempted; it can never be confidently realized. If you are in a concentration camp, or nailed to a tree, or can imagine what life must be like for those who are, you probably think things must be pretty bad, not only for yourself, but for a world where that sort of thing goes on,[17] worse yet, a world where we do that sort of thing to each other. It makes my blood curdle. But then I am slightly neurotic, or I would not be writing this treatise.

Again, just how bad are things that we would be justified in taking radical actions to change them, knowing our limitations and the disastrous results that have all but invariably accompanied past sallies into the field? We know that one person’s individual situation is not a fair guide. My philosophy calls for us to aspire to look beyond ourselves and contemplate the human (and not just humans) condition from the point of view of all. I will tell you frankly that I do not think I am even competent to assess my own condition. If I thought I were, then I would have killed myself on many a Monday, Wednesday or Friday; and yet I know that on Tuesday, Thursday, etc., I would likely find myself glad that I did not act on my Monday point of view. I do not think I am unique in that. I think that most people are incapable of fully understanding themselves, much less understanding other people. So, I am somewhat chary of drawing conclusions about the human condition at large, knowing that my conclusions about my own condition are unreliable.

One thing is for sure: the status quo could be improved upon. But how, and what is the goal? If we don’t know the goal, by definition we have no strategy, and our tactics will be unavailing. This treatise is as much about agreeing upon a worthy goal, as it is about the means of getting there.

Let us put the cart before the horse, just for a moment. Let us pretend that we at least know what the goal is. (I am certain most of us have not a clue.) How do we get there? Big steps or little steps? I don’t think that big steps are an option.

I am suggesting here that even if we knew what was good for humankind (and other kinds), which we don’t, then knowing how to achieve that good is quite beyond us. We can grope. That is about all.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all

Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

Bestows on final patronizing kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...

If we know anything about our limitations, we would know that any attempt at a radical solution, imposed on others than ourselves, is bound not only to fail, but to end in disaster. The law of unintended consequences seems to operate when tactics assume the grandiose. Does that make me a liberal or a conservative?

The last major government sponsored (mandated) utopian scheme was the Soviet Union. (China is different, somehow, always. And Cuba does not count. It is a fossil.) I ask you, during the heyday of the Soviet Union, how many countries saw significant numbers of their citizens fleeing to live in that worker’s paradise? Not a one. On the contrary, the Soviet Union (the “workers paradise”) had to shoot people just to keep them from stampeding to leave.

What is worse is that a significant number of intellectuals, living in those countries that no one wanted to leave, continued to support Stalinism long after it was obvious to any but the brain-dead that communism, utopian in its aspirations, was not something people anywhere in the world were voluntarily choosing. So much for intellectuals. But if their judgment is so bad, and history has proven beyond a doubt that it is, then what hope is there for major improvement in the system, undertaken by really smart people? Not much, in my opinion. We can, and indeed are, obliged to try to make things better, nevertheless. But in trying, we should recall our limitations. I am afraid it will have to be baby steps, nothing radical. If there is a purpose guiding the system, then perhaps we will be in luck; if not, then not.

We can pretend to have the key to world salvation, but in fact, the only key we have is to our own inner selves. We must look within, not without, for real solutions, radical or otherwise.

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

We should be tentative, not radical, in our politics, realizing that those having the courage of their convictions have time and again found their convictions to have been misguided. Ultimate solutions to the world’s problems are beyond our ken. But should we do nothing?

‘Do

‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

‘Nothing?’

I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’

Know/no? We know something. We are obliged to work with what we know. That is dharma. More than that is hubris. It would be wrong to stand by and do nothing when there are things, often small, that we can do, and know how to do. Of that there is no question.

But what about large political decisions. Will peasants in oppressive third-world countries be better off if the Shining Path gets its way? Not if history is any proof. Efficacious change seems to be gradual, usually, as best I can tell.

Too often, attempts to radically change or mold society have failed miserably. Not always, but usually.[18] Ataturk seems to have pulled it off. But the cost to the Greeks was rather high. So who knows? I certainly don’t.

If it is a close call, I say go slow, since I know that to do otherwise is likely to make things worse, as radical solutions have historically done. Occasionally, however, we are forced to participate in “enterprises of great pitch and moment,” “to take up arms against a sea of trouble,” whether we like it or not.

Only the committed pacifist (with whom I have much sympathy), one who says, “I refuse to participate in this madness, no matter what the consequences,” (Arjuna’s alter ego, which Krishna succeeded in repressing) can escape the tough, nuanced, decisions; God leaves the rest of us no clear cut way out. One is drafted, to fight in Iraq perhaps. Do you do your duty or not? What is your duty? What is your dharma? “Peace in our time” could have been achieved in 1938, if we had stood up to Hitler then, instead of waiting, in the case of the United States, until late 1941. I will never forget that.

Would that we had Krishna riding in our chariot to tell us why we must participate in this mad-cap drama when, like Arjuna, we don’t want to play the game anymore.

“Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.”
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

But we don’t get that luxury. Those of us who are not committed pacifists realize that there are times when doing nothing could have unintended consequences that are worse than standing still. That is part of the preposterous nature of the human condition. What the joker said to the thief speaks more directly to me than Krishna’s advice to Arjuna; but still, Krishna was right: what choice do we have?

And still she cried, and still the world pursues

Are we obliged to participate, at least if we care about improving the human condition, whether we know what we are doing or not? Does He know what He is doing? We surely don’t.

But, after all, who knows, and who can say
whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Whence all creation had its origin,
he, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
he, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows--or maybe even he does not know.
---(From the tenth book of the Rig Veda)---

Postscript: At the time of this postscript, Saddam Hussein’s regime has been toppled by the United States, Britain, and a handful of Eastern European former communist block nations, newly freed more or less peacefully, after a half century of oppression by Russia. (See my essay on Iraq.) I am glad I did not have to be the one to decide to enter that war, because I can see two sides to the argument for and against it. However, I have to agree with Christopher Hitchens on one thing. At the present time it looks to me that if the peace activists had had there way in their steadfast opposition to (1) the First Gulf War, (2) the intervention in Bosnia, (3) the air war aimed at stopping Serbian oppression of the Kosovars, (4) the Afghan incursion, and (5) the most recent war in Iraq, the following counter-factuals would most likely have resulted:

(1) (a) Kuwait would have ceased to exist and its people subjected to unprecedented brutality; (b) the Kurds in Northern Iraq would have been subjected to much worse treatment that they already suffered at the hands of “Chemical Ali,” and would very likely have been decimated several times over. (c) the Shiites in southern Iraq would have suffered a fate similar to the Kurds; and (d) Iraq would by now certainly be a nuclear power, with the world’s greatest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons to boot. (2) Bosnia would be a part of a greater Serbia, and the Bosnian Muslims would be ethnically cleansed. (3) Native born Kosovars (most of them Moslem) would be virtually nonexistent, having been driven off the land they had lived on in some cases for over a thousand years by a people who had not lived there in centuries. (4) (a) The Taliban would still be oppressing everyone in the country who was not a fundamentalist religious fanatic and a follower of a particularly Medieval brand of Islam, with woman being singled out for especially harsh treatment. (b) Afghanistan would still be giving safe-haven and sanctuary to al-Qaeda, with all that that entails. And (5) Saddam would still be in power, threatening us, his neighbors, and his own people, with the prospect of regime change being something akin to the timetable that has so far kept Castro in power for almost half a century.

Instead (1) (a) Kuwait is thriving and so are the Kuwaitis; (b) the Kurds have enjoyed something akin to political freedom ever since the no-fly zone was implemented; (c) the Shiites in Southern Iraq, while still oppressed, were nevertheless spared the harsher atrocities that the imposition of the no-fly zone prevented; (d) Iraq never became a nuclear power, and whatever chemical and biological weapons it possessed prior to the latest war were certainly reduced. (2) Bosnia is not a part of a Greater Serbia, and life there for Muslims is a million times better than it would have been had Milosevic had his way. (3) The Kosovars are relatively secure and free. (4) (a) The Taliban have all but ceased to exist, and the people of Afghanistan, particularly the woman, are considerably freer and better off by every possible standard of measurement one can imagine; and (b) al-Qaeda, though not killed, has at least been severely crippled, and, in any event cannot roam freely with government sponsorship and protection in Afghanistan (at least). And (5) Saddam and his sons are no longer in power in Iraq.

It would be very hard to argue that my last five numbered points are bad things. It could be done, but not with a straight face, much less, done convincingly. One could argue that we don’t know with metaphysical certainty that the first five numbered points would have actually occurred, but that too would be a hard argument to make. About the best the peace activists could do would be to admit that life is better on the whole, and certainly would have been worse (my numbered points (1) through (5) above), as things actually turned out, but that we had no way of knowing that the outcome of the five enumerated acts of force would have turned out so well, and that the precedent that was set will result in something worse still to come. Alright. That is possible. But with 20-20 hindsight, the anti-war activist ought to at least be somewhat less strident, and perhaps more reserved than previously. Grant me that, at least. You be the judge, Arjuna.

1.18 The Fundamental Absurdity of the Human Condition.

This subject belongs primarily in the Confessions, because the absurdity of the situation in which humans have been placed is, for me, and because I am so aware of it, the single most deleterious phenomenon affecting my life and outlook and sense of well-being. I am all but convinced that, were it not so, I would be relatively well-adjusted. Since the opportunity for experimental confirmation of this belief has never arisen and well never arise, I can only speculate.

I need not speculate, however, about the fundamental absurdity of the human condition. That social life and religion, in particular, are irrational and absurd is beyond argument (or cavil, as the lawyer would say). It is true that the phenomenon goes largely unnoticed, except perhaps among intellectuals (who are themselves in many cases the most absurd of all), but the fact that it is largely unnoticed is the ultimate absurdity.

When one surveys history, philosophy, religion, society, it ought to be the case that the absurdity of human history and intellectual thought to date should strike one as a largely self-evident truth. The fact that only a handful of people are even aware of the situation is one of the greatest absurdities of all. True, Sartre, and others, have noticed. But Sartre himself had notions that were as absurd as the phenomena he was noticing.

On the one hand, given the fundamental absurdity of the human condition, it is very possibly a good thing that most people are relatively unaware (unless pressed) of the true nature of the situation. I believe it is a good thing, because, given the limitations of the human condition, we would be totally incapable of constructing the modern scientific world, much less organizing society, through the exercise of human reason alone. I guess that makes me a conservative with liberal ideals, a person who loses on both scores.

Admittedly, I am making a judgment here that the modern world is preferable to the medieval world, or the world of the primitive hunter-gatherer, with no dentists, headache remedies or the internet. It can be argued that I am wrong about this,[19] and I, myself, am somewhat ambivalent about it. The question of whether or not the modern or even the post-modern world is preferable to the world of the hunter-gatherer has been questioned before, by Rousseau, to give perhaps the most prominent example. Certainly, if you believe that numbers count for anything, you realize that a world of hunter-gatherers would mean that the human experience (and the number of tooth aches, untreated or not) would not be shared by nearly as many as otherwise.

I ought, perhaps, first make the case for the inadequacy of reason alone to organize a society and to scientifically modernize it, and perhaps I will, later. For now, I will take it as a given. It is quite obvious to me that such is the case. I do not mean that reason, in theory, is incapable of constructing a utopia, but I insist that the record speaks for itself on the question of the inability of human beings to think through a solution. Human nature would have to change, and it so far has not. Not only human nature, but the raw intellectual power of the human mind would have to change too; and neither is likely to take place any time soon. That too is a good thing, because if human nature were changed, or the powers of the mind increased dramatically, there is no reason to be convinced that the result would be salutary.

People go about their day-to-day existence hardly aware of their situation.

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

It is not just that they are unaware; as I have commented, this is not altogether a bad thing. But the lengths to which this self-delusion is taken has to be disconcerting to those who do realize it. In American society one cannot talk about politics openly, in the way one used to be able to do, and one cannot talk about religion at all, outside the members of one’s own particular cult. Why? Obviously because what passes for religion, in this day, as in medieval times, is still largely a cultish and slavish adherence to what can only be charitably labeled as superstition. Among the enlightened (and not a few church and synagogue goers), this is not true; but the enlightened are so few. Oddly, you will be more likely to find them among the rabbis and ministers than among the congregation. But this too is an absurdity. In an age where tolerance of diversity is about the only moral precept that carries any social weight, why are people not more free in the expressions of their deepest, heart-felt, superstitious belief systems. The reason is that those beliefs are so absurd that, even if tolerated, they would become easily exposed if discussed openly, in the presence of others who are not in the same cult, and invariably someone would be offended. Not offending people who are different is the second most important social precept, right behind the celebration of diversity, and not unlike unto it.

I for one do celebrate diversity, and I don’t want to offend anyone, so I am in the same boat. But I am myself offended that people can be so stupid when it comes to matters of such importance. Do you wonder how anyone can go to church one day a week, and live the lives they lead the rest of the time. I am no friend of Kierkegaard, but he was right in believing that logically, if one purports to be a Christian at all, one ought to embrace it whole-hog. Of course, it is the fanatics that have embraced Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, etc., whole-hog, who are truly dangerous and frightening. Accordingly, people believe all manner of things, no matter how absurd, and the subject cannot really be brought out into the light without the person holding the lantern enduring an intolerable amount of social opprobrium.

If one of the cult followers tries to argue cogently a rational basis for his or her particular cult’s belief system, that argument will fail, or at least has so far failed, the ultimate test of acceptance by all rational thinkers who have not been inculcated into the same tradition from an early and impressionable age. And if all, or most, rational civilized people cannot agree, even if general, on a subject as important as religion, then what hope is there for reason in this discourse. There are some who would say, I among them, that there is some truth in all religions. To say more than that, would be to expose the absurdity of the situation, and to offend every one in the room at the same time. (Besides you won’t be invited to any more dinner parties.) It is truly an absurd situation, felt most keenly by those who really care about such things.

It may not have been clear in medieval (and more primitive) times, whether or not this or that sacred tradition were literally true or not, but it is beyond argument, or should be, by now, that none of them are or were. At best we can interpret these traditions allegorically, as I do, or even as an expression, read through a glass darkly, of a form of divinity. I subscribe to that idea as well. But even in the 21^st century, the great mass of humanity, some of them even intelligent, have beliefs that are not that different from their medieval predecessors. It seems to bother few that these beliefs differ dramatically among them, while at the same time often being passionately and firmly held. People in the middle had an excuse. They did not, but we do, know better. There is not much I can do about this rather conspicuous absurdity of the human condition, so it is not on my list of things that are ripe for change. It is a symptom; it is not the disease. I merely want to remark upon the rather obvious absurdity of the situation, and to note the ridiculous milieu into which every non-delusional, rational free-thinker is necessarily placed. It is like living among creatures from another time or planet. This is not good for the soul.

How do we weigh and interpret the severity of events around us? Well, we can watch year after year while thirty to forty-thousand people are killed on the highways, with hardly a second thought. Until recently, we could watch untold millions dying of lung cancer and other diseases directly related to smoking cigarettes, and yet pay tobacco farmers subsidies to grow the stuff. We can watch while millions die from AIDs and somehow get on with our lives, without much interruption. But if a terrorist starts shooting a handful of people, everyone in the nation is acutely aware of the situation and is accordingly horrified. Of course when thousands are killed, as on September 11, we all have nightmares (I did). And if those numbers do not impress you, consider this: in the 100 years before small pox was eradicate, the virus killed possibly as many as one billion people. How many World Trade Center would it take to hold a thousand million people?

Why do we get so upset about some things and not others? Why do we shed oceans of tears over 911, without losing a wink of sleep over the other daily tragedies of life that have snuffed out the lives of an incomparably larger number of people? I think answers can be supplied, some of them quite sensible. But even if we do not expend a proportional amount of emotion on other tagedies (if you consider one death to be as significant as another, at least objectively), it is still troubling that we don’t at least realize the absurdity of our emotional detachment from the more numerically significant horrors that surround us. It is probably a very good thing that we were so upset over the events of 911. Is it a good thing that we are relatively unaffected by the deaths on an incomparably larger scale? Maybe that is good too. After all, there is only so much horror that a person can feel. However, at a minimum, it would make some sense for more of us to realize that we should, at the same time as we mourn the deaths of 3000 people, to intellectually and rationally, if not emotionally, make more of an attempt to put in perspective the relative number of deaths involved in the things we can do something about. It is absurd not to. Again, I would, as in other cases, step-back and say so-what. Perhaps it is a good thing that we don’t look at these things rationally. Perhaps. But the truth is that time and time again we have charged off to defend “our interests” only to find 100 million people, more or less, dead at the end of the day, to take the last couple of World Wars as but one example. Absurd.

“There must be some way out of here, said the Joker to the Thief.” If reason is so ineffective, and if history so far is what happens when we are left to our natural proclivities, what hope is there? Absurd. One choice is to drop out of the madness, to refuse to participate. This is tempting. The other is to make the best of it, to participate in one’s own small way. Admitting that reason is not an adequate principle to drive the self-organizing engine of society, it seems to me that we could nevertheless use just a little more of it, whether it offends someone or not.

One final note. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the human condition is that the level of public discourse on the subjects touched upon above is so pathetically low. One need only turn on the television news, any day of the week, to realize that people, even our media elites, apparently really have only a superficial grasp of the issues on which they report and on which they give opinions. In order to give at least a tentative opinion or analysis of any particular political or sociological subject of obvious importance to the news hungry public, it would be helpful if the commentators had done some serious soul-searching about what life is really all about and why. Even if, like me, they have no clear answers, wouldn’t it at least be efficacious to realize at least that much? If, as I maintain, the human condition really is absurd (you are free to argue it is not if you prefer it that way), then would it not be somewhat helpful if persons of influence took the fact into account? I, personally, do not think the average journalist is even remotely aware of just how absurd their and our lives are. If they did, the commentary that passes for our public discourse would be light years above where it is. That the media functions at such a low level is yet another absurdity in itself. They are like robots, or perhaps lemmings, just like the rest of us. What is truly important? How necessary is it that can afford the things we spend so much money on? What would happen if we were forced to live more modestly, as an alternative to going to war over oil? I don’t have any ready answers to questions such as these, in part, because I don’t hear many people asking them.

ARTICLE 2
The MeaniNg of Words

[1] This is a work in constant progress. It is obviously unfinished. I add to it as I get the time.

[2] Have you ever wondered about sentence adjectives like “hopefully,” which we are told are not sentence adjectives in English, but which, in the case of “hopefully” has a common and accepted usage in German, which is why Henry Kissinger probably (mis)used it so often. Grammarians of the old school ask, what does it modify, hopefully. You meant that you were hopeful, not that the verb was being acted out in a hopeful manner, as in the runner ran swiftly, with swiftly describing the how the runner ran. You can have a swift runner, but not a swiftly runner. Well, that explanation certainly has logic going for it, but consider other sentence adjectives to which the same logic could apply, such as “happily” (that one causes me to cringe sometimes, but it is indisputably a good —if idiomatic— English sentence adverb). I still use sentence adverbs with some caution, because my logical mind stumbles over them, but the truth is that “hopefully” is by now perfectly accepted usage (thanks in part to Henry K), performs a valuable function, its meaning is understood by everyone, and is more mellifluous than “I hope.”

[3] The rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, besides being derided as a non-rule by the Fowlers, was said by Winston Churchill to be a rule up with which he would not put. The Aggie visiting Harvard, upon being chastised for asking where Cambridge was at, replied, “Okay, where is Cambridge at, asshole.”

[4] See www.PhilosophyForum.net for a bibliography of sorts.

[5] Natural Theology -- or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature, by Rev. William Paley.

[6] These two evolutionary biologists are actually at odds with one another on a number of what they would consider to be fundamental principles. See Dawkins v. Gould, Kim Sterelny, Totem Books, USA, 2001, ISBN 1 8406 249 3. I am odds with both of them, but not on the basics.

[7] Cf., anything written by John D. Barrow, one of my favorite scientist authors.

[8] Don’t get me wrong, Dunn is one of my favorite poets. Being raped (actually he used the word “ravished” but we got the point) by God surely qualifies an immodest, even if a powerful, image.

[9] See Rawls, Theory of Justice, a work which I confess I have not read.

[10] As I say this, I am thinking maybe it wouldn’t be bad for the world as a whole, since the countries that received the displaced Israelis would be culturally enriched, but that is thinking too far out. There are limits on the mind’s ability to think in broad utilitarian terms about consequences that are simply not predictable. All one can do is to arrive at tentative conclusions based on tentative knowledge.

[11] See Gilbert Ryle, “Descartes’ Myth.” Ch. 1, The Concept of Mind, reprinted in The Nature of Mind, Ch. 4, Rosenthal, Ed., Oxford, 1991.

[12] E.g. ,P.F. Strawson, “Self, Mind and Body,” Ch. 5, id.

[15] Hate, of course, is entirely a psychological phenomenon. Talking about meta-physical hate is absurd on its face.

[16] See Joyce, Ulysses, afadfasdfff find that quote

[17] Again the theodicy problem, if you are religious and not only religious but think that God is capable of doing anything about it, which might be the mistake that lead you into that antimony in the first place. Just a suggestion. But an easy one that solves the problem. Why not at least consider the obvious.

[19] See, for example, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

ARTICLE 1 Prelude and Preview