Tuesday, May 29, 2012

A vile orgy of self-sacrificing

“The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing,” says Ayn Rand, who imagines capitalism is the cure. In fact, capitalism, at least as presently practiced, is the most vile orgy of self-sacrificing that has ever existed—all the more vile since it is done in the name of a misguided egoism that imagines material things and material things alone are what the self needs to flourish. The investment banker works twelve hours a day at a job he despises so that he can spend his evening in a fine restaurant, where the waiter works twelve hours a day at a job he despises. We nail ourselves to the cross of commerce, and then use its rewards to erect monuments to our martyrdom.

At work we strive to fulfill what we imagine are the needs of others, which, we imagine, are expressed in the marketplace. In our leisure hours we strive to fulfill what we imagine are our own needs, which, we imagine, can be fulfilled by things that are offered in the marketplace. Needs that are simple to discover and require elaborate means to satisfy can indeed be very efficiently addressed by the marketplace. But needs that are difficult to discover and require simple means to satisfy cannot. When I reflect sincerely, I find that the second sort of needs far outnumber the first.

So long as I rely on the marketplace to satisfy my needs, and to guide me in helping others satisfy theirs, I will omit from consideration every need that cannot be adequately expressed by the marketplace. Very often the best service we can render to our fellow human beings is to advise them to change course. Offering them the means to continue on their present course, the one thing the market can do exquisitely, often doesn’t help them at all.

If I try offering love, I might find, at least occasionally, that I get love in return. But this market is very inefficient. I will often be swindled, and have no means to restore justice.

When all the fox’s wiles fail to fetch the grapes, he insists they must be sour. A critic of commerce who doesn’t have more than his share of booty always leaves himself open to the accusation that he is merely airing sour grapes. But most of us have in fact been able to sample a few grapes now and then, even if we haven’t fetched the entire vine. I find the grapes are indeed sweet, in moderation, but in excess they only produce indigestion. The fox’s self-deception, I would say, isn’t really so unwise. If the grapes prove too difficult to fetch, why shouldn’t he look for a way to put them out of his mind and happily go on his way looking for other fruit? The illusion foisted upon us by commerce, that its fruits are the only ones worth striving for, this, more than anything, we must fortify ourselves against.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Quantum Vodoo

Powerful faith tends to produce hallucinations that confirm it. Such hallucinations testify to exceptional states of mind. But they are misinterpreted by philistine interpreters of religion as evidence of the existence of supernatural entities.

“Extraordinary claims,” says Carl Sagan, “require extraordinary evidence.” If the personal accounts of disciples happen to coincide with one another, this can be explained far more plausibly by their shared faith, or by supposing some conference took place between them, than by supposing, in the face of all the evidence we have accumulated to the contrary, that the laws of nature vary with time and place.

It still irks me when quantum mechanics is invoked to smuggle superstition into the realm of fact. Quantum mechanics precisely predicts the probabilities of events, leaving no room for divine or other mysterious forms of intervention. When the outcome of experiments shows that the predicted probabilities are very precise, it becomes implausible to suppose that they are being mysteriously manipulated. Einstein once quipped, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Well, He does. But the quantum mechanical dice are not loaded dice. As our experiments show quite definitively, they are fair dice. Both mathematics and experiment show that quantum mechanics reduces precisely to Newtonian mechanics for things on the scale of human beings and the objects we see and manipulate with our unaided eyes and hands—even, in fact, for things on the scale of cells. The universe didn’t suddenly become less predictable when quantum mechanics was introduced. Thermodynamic effects, also probabilistic in nature, dwarf quantum mechanical effects in their magnitude, and these have been known and understood since the Nineteenth Century.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The religion of bourgeois prudence

The first step to moral perfection is your liberation from the religion in which you were raised. Not a single person has come to perfection except by following this way.
Thoreau, as cited in Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, P. Sekirin, trans. (1997), August 8
The religion in which I was raised was the religion of bourgeois prudence—the rituals of orderly production and consumption, the reverence for capital. This is the prevailing religion, the state sanctioned religion. Only by overcoming it can I free my mind, and perceive without religious illusions.

Monday, May 14, 2012

The German word "geistig"

“Dancing, business, theatre, cards, dares, horses, women, drink, travel, all these are powerless in the face of the boredom that arises when a lack of intellectual needs makes intellectual pleasures impossible.”—Schopenhauer
The “geistige Bedürfnisse” of which Schopenhauer speaks could also be translated as “spiritual needs.” To our ears, this would give the passage an entirely different meaning. “Intellectual” and “spiritual” might be considered synonymous, both referring to the mind. But unfortunately the word “spiritual” has been usurped by those for whom care of the intellect is a lazy and undisciplined affair. It is as if the word “athletic” had been usurped by those who watch television all day. We may consider ourselves fortunate that, at least for now, the word “intellectual” retains an association with discipline. In our paradisiacal democracy, where we are ruled by those who, in addition to representing the majority, also represent the intellectual level of the majority, this is unlikely to last for long.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Thoughts

“‘The room filled with laughter,’” Noah read aloud. He looked up from the book in his lap. “Isn’t that odd?” he asked, “It’s like laughing at your own joke.”

“It’s a laugh track,” proposed Hannah.

Noah and Hannah were part of that social set in which the quest to demonstrate familiarity with the latest intellectual fashions has become habitual, instinctive, second-nature. Hannah was therefore eager to demonstrate she too was intimately familiar with Müllhauser, the German author whose book, Intellectual Detritus, had just appeared in English.

“In his seminal essay on the political philosopher Leo Strauss,” Hannah clamored pretentiously, “Müllhauser claims that Strauss should be interpreted not only as advocating esoteric reading, but also as demanding esoteric writing.”

As the room filled with the smoke from Hannah’s bong, Noah continued reading aloud, “‘The purpose of my art is to disrupt the narrative of the reader’s life and force him to create a metanarrative. I introduce self-referentiality into my art in order to persuade my readers to introduce self-referentiality into the psyche—in other words, to introspect, to reflect upon themselves.’”

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Brecht

Bertolt Brecht laments that for him is it impossible to eat and drink when so many suffer from hunger and thirst. For me it is impossible to enjoy the freedom that comes from my discovery of the myriad ways I am manipulated, while so many others continue to forge fetters for themselves.