Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The evangelists of mammon

If there were ever any doubt that mammon worship is a religion, just see what happens when a wayward soul begins to question its catechism and stray from the holy path to profit. Friends and family come rushing in, hoping to save the wayward soul from his errant ways and restore his righteous reverence for lucre.

In the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus begins to attract a following with his heretical preaching, his mother and brothers come rushing to save him, saying, “He must be out of his mind” (3:21). But Jesus refuses to go with them. “Whoever does the will of God,” he says, “is my brother and sister and mother” (3:35).

Unfortunately Jesus’ mother never did get him to return to the righteous path of humble servitude to emperor and empire. He continued on his imprudent path, and—as we all know—the empire didn’t much like it.

When I see souls that might have been working for their freedom instead scurrying around doing their bit parts to organize the logistics of American empire, I think of bureaucrats in first century Rome. They too imagined they were serving God and man by serving a violent and brutal regime.

Today’s rulers are glorified by their noble dedication to conform to the will of the majority. They can’t aspire to be too good, too noble, too pious—this would place them in opposition to the majority, which, after all, is far too busy to cultivate any difficult virtues. The majority is so sacred, in fact, it becomes impious even to mention its vices.

The majority wants bigger houses and nicer cars. It doesn’t much care if teenage girls in China suffer as a result. It doesn’t much care if future generations inherit an uninhabitable planet. It doesn’t much mind that its rulers must assassinate those who dissent from the rule of its empire. It, like Caesar, wants to expand its little empire, and is not at all ashamed of the brutality it employs. And, just as Christians in the first century were compelled to worship Caesar and transform his brutality into a virtue, so we today are compelled to worship the majority and transform its greed into a virtue. If we refuse, we transgress the sacredness of majority rule.

My soul comes into this world only once. It gets one and only one chance to perfect itself. I know for certain that its role models will always be those souls who have exerted heroic efforts to perfect themselves. The majority, with its petty concern for power and wealth, with its utter indifference to the cultivation of the intellect, is beneath my consideration.

I’m grateful to friends and family who generously try to rescue me from my imprudent heresy, and bring me back into the loving fold of our mammon worshiping society. But I am content, not only to be poor, but even to die on the cross, if that’s what it takes to free my soul from servitude and return it to its path toward perfection.

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Why Johnny can’t meditate

I close my eyes. I concentrate my attention on my breath. I notice thoughts circling around my mind. I berate myself for embarrassing moments in the past. I worry about things that aren’t under my control. The silly thoughts, once I become aware of them, scurry timidly back into their hiding places. Finally my mind falls silent. I’m aware of nothing but my breath and the chirping of the birds.

No, wait. There's one other thing. It’s an intense feeling not quite like any I’ve felt before. What is it?

If this state of self-awareness I’m cultivating right now is the summum bonum, as some Buddhists seem to think, then all the time and effort I have spent in the past—my careful planning to provide a life of material comfort to myself and my loved ones—the intellectual achievements I made in order to support that quest for comfort—all this has been merely wasted time and effort.

If, on the other hand, a frenetic pace of nonstop intellectual achievement is the sole source of meaning in life, then the skill I’m learning now could be a really bad influence. What if I enjoy this state of meditative calm? Could it sap my will for all productive activity and send me into a downward spiral of unemployment and indolence? The first chapter of the meditation book told me about the benefits of homelessness. By experimenting with meditation, am I exposing myself to a perverse influence that will lead me to become homeless?

My entire life has been defined with reference to my work. Recreation is intended to re-create my will to work. Rest is intended to give me energy for work. This exercise in meditation, which I expected to be just another interesting form of entertainment, seems to call the fundamental principle of my life into question. Buddha persuaded many of his contemporaries to leave their homes, quit their jobs and live the homeless monastic life. Now I see why.

The consequence of this intense feeling, whatever its source, is that I can’t meditate for more than a few minutes at a time. The idea of confronting the meaninglessness of my life, if it really is meaningless, is too daunting. The risk of disturbing my life is too daunting. Meditation feels like a subversive activity, an act of rebellion against the system of regulated work and regulated pleasure that keeps our whole economic apparatus in motion. Aside from a few years of teenage angst, I have never felt like a subversive force or wanted to be one. So how can I meditate?

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Down home meditation

The cross-legged posture. The yellow robes. The Pali and Sanskrit texts. These foreign trappings make meditation seem like something strange and exotic. But is it really? The man clad in overalls in his rocking chair on the porch may very well be meditating better than the urbanite decked in robes sitting cross legged in the Zen Center. He doesn’t call his form of rocking contemplation meditation. The peace he finds he doesn’t call nirvana. But does the lack of foreign names for his calm contemplation make it any less sublime?

As far back as I can remember I have spent entire days, even weeks, lying in bed doing nothing. No television. No music. Just lying silently thinking. Perhaps if I had put on a yellow robe and sat cross-legged on the floor with a statue of Buddha at my feet, my mother would have been impressed by my exotic piety rather than appalled by my indolence. But would my thoughts have been any different?

Buddhist teacher Nyanaponika Thera reminds his Western readers that the mindfulness achieved in meditation is not by any means a “mystical” sate. It is not at all foreign to the experience of the average person. “It is, on the contrary, something quite simple and common, and very familiar to us.”

The urbanite jets around the globe seeking entertainment. She spends vast sums of money to stimulate her senses. To her the uncouth country man in his rocking chair is an object of ridicule and derision. But listen to the urbanite’s conversation for a few minutes, and you will see what all the cosmopolitanism and refinement she’s so proud of really amount to. She talks about the Louvre and the Uffizi, not to recount what they have taught her, but to brag where she has been. Proudly recounting the great paintings she has seen, she shows only that they failed to teach her what they might have taught—how to see the beauty in ordinary people and ordinary things. And what does our jetsetter do the moment she gets home? She turns on the television. Her mind never stops looking outward to others for entertainment. Not for a single moment does she achieve the calm, self-reliant reflectiveness of the man in his rocking chair.

The man in the rocking chair may not have exotic names for his wisdom. The examples he uses to illustrate it may be drawn from his village rather than the world. But talk to him for an hour, and you may find that he has discovered, all on his own, important things calm thought can teach, and a perpetual stream of entertainment never will.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

What can I do to avoid independent thought?

One of the great things about a mind that allows itself to be ruled by the majority is that its thoughts arise organically, in concert with the whole. Ideas that would have been deemed contradictory according to outdated rules of logic are now harmonious, since they flow from the harmonious whole. The will of the majority is all the evidence we need. The power of the majority is all the argument we need. The more thoroughly and completely our thoughts derive from a desire to conform to the majority, without perverse extraneous influences like evidence and logic, the more they show a pure-hearted will to serve the majority, and the more commendable they are.

Why is the opinion of the majority sacred? Because the majority believes it is sacred. Are you worried this is a circular argument? Don’t worry. Such an objection relies on outdated standards of logic the majority no longer approves of, and which are therefore no longer in force.

In the past there was a superstitious belief that an individual mind was capable of assessing whether a thought was logical or illogical, whether evidence was compelling or insufficient, whether an action was humane or inhumane. Fortunately, our society is now almost entirely rid of this antisocial intellectual behavior. A mind that dares to question the majority can only disrupt the smooth functioning of democracy with its foolish and futile attempt to think independently.

Before we forget, we must mention an important exception. Although independent thought is, strictly speaking, futile, it is nonetheless permitted in one particular case: the stage hands that work lighting and cameras, helping to fulfill the sacred function of transmitting images of adored celebrities, are permitted, while concerned with petty technical problems of their trade, to think independently. This exception has been specially carved out because boring, insignificant problems about electrical circuits are beneath the dignity of the majority.

In superstitious ages, when we still believed in the possibility of independent thought, some men and women captured their antisocial philosophies in writing. Unfortunately, some of these barbaric documents have survived more or less intact through the ages. These relics of the past threaten to mislead impressionable young minds in the present, and have always posed a grave problem for smoothly functioning democracies. Some rulers have tried burning the antisocial books. But this turned out to be counterproductive; it just made people more curious about their contents. Now we have much better solutions. We provide such a dazzling array of nonstop entertainment, young minds no longer have time to learn how to read. We make sure language changes so quickly that the English in which the antisocial books were written begins to seem like a foreign language. Furthermore, some of the improvements we make to language we make in the name of justice. A masculine pronoun used to represent a person of indeterminate gender wasn’t just an arbitrary grammatical convention. It was an abomination. It’s immoral to read the old books, not just because of the antisocial philosophy they contain, but because of the abominably unjust language in which they are written.

Now that your desire to be a good democratic citizen has been awakened, you might be asking yourself, “What can I do to avoid independent thought?” This is indeed a challenge. But we have done many things to make it easier for you. When you wake up in the morning, you'll find we've arranged to have a newspaper delivered to your door. Any tendency you might have had during the night to think independently can be quickly remedied by immersion in the day to day concerns of the majority. Then, of course, you must earn slips of paper that certify the majority deems you worthy of being housed and fed. So you’ll have to spend your day in a factory where the foreman ensures you work on projects the majority approves of.

The evenings, however, have always been the greatest challenge. It wasn’t until electrical engineers devised a way to beam images of celebrities adored by the majority into your home that we had a really efficient and foolproof way of preventing independent thought in the evenings. But now, the problem is solved. You can settle into your comfortable armchair, and have the thoughts of the majority pumped into your mind until it’s thoroughly exhausted and ready for sleep. The progress has been so tremendous, it’s truly exhilarating!

When you encounter a poor soul who has not yet seen the light, who deliberately deprives himself of the warm, cozy joy of service to the majority, what, you may ask, can you do to help him? Fear not. There are many things you can do. If he is poor, perhaps the most effective strategy is to point out all the advantages he could have by conforming his tastes and opinions to those of the majority. Show him how slips of paper that represent the approval of the majority can be used to persuade others to do things for him. Show him how he can obtain more of these slips by choosing his projects based on the whims of the majority rather than his own misguided attempts to be rational.

If the errant soul is rich, the problem becomes somewhat more difficult. He accidentally got the slips of paper intended to vouch for approval of the majority, while in fact he continues to defy the majority. No wonder he’s confused! In this case the most effective strategy will be to implant doubts that undermine his misplaced confidence in his ability to reason independently. How does he know he isn’t crazy? Isn’t the fact that he disagrees with the majority, in itself, sufficient to show that he must be crazy?

You might think debate would be a good way to help an errant soul return to reason. But this approach can easily backfire. In the past, men with eccentric ideas debated with others in order to put their ideas to the test. When no one found an adequate way to refute the eccentric ideas, as in the case of Socrates, the debate only encouraged errant minds to continue their antisocial lines of thought. If you appeal to reason, you concede that a mind capable of disobeying the majority is capable of reason. But this is precisely where the errant mind has gone astray. Don't appeal to the errant mind’s independent reason. Undermine the mistaken idea that an individual mind is capable of reason. Reasoning is what majorities do. Individual minds can only assent to rationality as determined by the majority, or insist on irrationally defying the will of the majority. By trying to reason with an errant mind, you only encourage it in its mistaken belief that there might be other options.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

How to become a genius
An instruction manual

The principle of dialectical reason is that a contradiction indicates the need for a more comprehensive theory. So, for example, light must travel at the same speed in all moving frames. If a spaceship travels at 0.5c, how fast is light from its headlights going? The contradiction is resolved by special relativity.

The difference between common sense and dialectal reason is that common sense takes the easy path, tolerates contradictions, tries to live with them, while dialectal reason attempts to develop a more difficult framework in which contradiction disappears. I ask myself, what keeps me from becoming a genius? Could it be the fact that I’m accepting contradictions in my thought? Suppose I were to say contradictions are unacceptable. Then I would be forced to learn the theories that reconcile them. I would become a genius, or die trying.

A broken limb won’t support weight. A broken network of concepts—a network that includes contradictions—won’t support intellectual weight. If I shirk the effort of creating or learning a difficult theory, my mind will be crippled by contradictions it might have avoided.

They tell me intelligence is genetic, but I believe what keeps most of us from becoming geniuses is not lack of genes, but lack of will. If you don’t have that “genius or bust” mentality—where you simply have to be a genius before you die—then you will certainly never become one.

Online you can find reading lists for PhD programs of distinguished universities. Check out some books. Start reading. If you don’t understand, go back to the master’s program. If you must, go back and reread The Tempest and everything you read in high school. Learning is more like a spiral staircase than an escalator.

Why is Proust so obsessed with memory? Because memory is the essence of genius. The genius remembers all he learns and synthesizes it into a grand theory of everything.

If you don’t know calculus, Bohr can never explain to you the theory that reconciles our contradictory notions about light. We need very abstract and difficult concepts to understand the correct theory. Why should we suppose it’s different in other fields?

Of course the most likely outcome of my quest to develop my genius will be nothing. But a failed life devoted to cultivating genius is, in my estimation, far more laudable than a successful life devoted to cultivating reputation, wealth and honors. For me, giving up studying, giving up on the attempt to synthesize a grand theory of everything, would be like giving up on life. Yet this is precisely what my contemporaries demand.

Friday, September 5, 2014

What's your sign?

Scientific opinion and popular opinion differ so widely and so often that it sometimes seems not only that they come from different worlds, but that the world they're describing must be an altogether different one. One of the most common examples of such disagreement is the case of astrology.

Within the confines of today’s scientific understanding of the universe, there is no mechanism that could plausibly explain how the position of the stars and planets at the time of a person’s birth could influence his behavior or his fate. The advocates of astrology apparently do not intend to call this scientific understanding of the universe into question. Their intention seems rather to be to assert that science is only one among many ways of thinking, all of which should have an equal right to exist.

The right to exist of differing ways of thinking is of course indisputable. Everyone should be able to have his own opinion on any subject. An equal right to existence is not the same as an equal right to attention, however; nor does it imply an equal right to praise. Those who care about justice, for example, will find unjust opinions, such as racism, entirely repulsive. Although one can recognize that such opinions have a right to exist and be expressed, one can nonetheless despise them.

If someone felt uncomfortable with an opinion because of a concern for justice, no one would find him unreasonable. The question I would like to ask is this: If there were someone who felt uncomfortable with an opinion, not because of concern for justice, but because of concern for truth, would it be fair to call him unreasonable?

The serious, passionate scientist does not consider his way of thinking as merely “one among many” equally valid ways of looking at the physical world. For him, science is the one way of thinking which attends most carefully to truth. The fundamental principle of science is that every truth claim must be justified, either by experiment or by deduction from previously established results. The truth must always be handled with the utmost caution, never merely carelessly fabricated. In real life it is not always handled this way, but this is the ideal.

In everyday conversation, however, things are of course not so serious. There the aim is not a conscientious search for truth, but only a carefree search for entertainment. A topic of conversation is raised, not to instruct and enlighten, but to entertain and amuse. Everyday conversation consists predominantly of jokes and small-talk.

When those participating in the conversation have differing opinions, however, the possibility arises that someone will chose a topic for his jokes and small-talk which for him is cheerful and amusing, but for someone else is a very serious and sensitive topic. This latter person might be someone who cares about justice, when the conversation relates to justice, or someone who cares about truth, when the conversation relates to truth.

When someone is faced with this situation, there are three alternatives. First, he can join in the conversation with his own jokes and small-talk, and thereby abandon or betray the seriousness of his ideals. Second, he can attempt to transform the casual conversation into a serious discussion about justice or truth, and thereby spoil the fun of everyone else. Third, he can maintain an embarrassing silence.

This is the situation in which the admirer of science, the lover of truth, finds himself when someone—merely with the intention of being friendly—asks him, “What’s your sign?”

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Luxury and leisure

I have often observed the contempt the American middle class shows for all forms of culture that demand discipline and leisure: ancient languages, literature, philosophy, and essentially every other intellectual pursuit that doesn't open immediate prospects of wealth. The grimaces that contort the faces of acquaintances when I so much as mention the existence of poetry have always astounded me, and at the same time mystified me. Only now is the source of aversion becoming clear. Although we love to brag about our exotic vacations, we know perfectly well that the leisure required to actually understand the cultures we occasionally visit is far, far beyond our means. Our dedication to middle class luxuries deprives us of the leisure we need to improve our minds. After all, we couldn’t possibly afford leisure and nice furniture too.

Emerson describes one of his motives for keeping a journal as a profound need to rewrite the encyclopedia of human knowledge in the way most intelligible to him, “each mind requiring to write the whole of literature and science for itself.” Does each mind really have such a need? If so, the middle class have been brutalizing ourselves, are still brutalizing ourselves, and intend to continue brutalizing ourselves, by depriving ourselves of its fulfillment. All so we can have nice furniture!

Even to raise the possibility in middle class society that there might be a need for intellectual development sends everyone present into squirms of discomfort. It’s almost as if we had mentioned religion—the other subject that claims we need it, and whose claims we’re determined to ignore. What, after all, if the claims turn our to be right? They might deprive us of the comfortable couches on which our pampered asses are squirming.

Even though we haven’t understood it, we know beforehand that all this “culture” stuff must be pomp and pretense. Because if it weren’t, we would be forced to admit to ourselves that even in our forties and fifties, we’re still procrastinating remedying the deficiencies in our education.

The rhetoric of those who tell us we must learn the arguments for both sides of an issue before we make up our minds is no more than an advertising tactic for those peddling their alleged ability to show us both sides of the issues. The image of the "cultured man" they try to implant in our minds is no different from the image of the happy husband in the driver’s seat of his Cadillac. This is just culture’s way of peddling its wares. The humanities is one gig among others. The elusive thing they call "intellectual flourishing" is nothing more than a marketing ploy.

This is what I tell myself, as I sit on my comfortable couch and continue to procrastinate.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

The is/ought distinction

The path from science to morality is a very short one, if we would care to take it. Fundamental to science is the norm of objectivity, the demand that I judge the truth or falsity of a claim without considering my personal interests. If I apply the same norm I apply to epistemic actions to other actions, then it follows I must judge the goodness or badness of an action without considering my personal interests. A scientist will reach the same diagnosis when confronted with a wound in the another human being’s arm and a wound in his own. A moral man will take the same action when he observes another human being’s hunger and when he observes his own. The norm of objective observation dictates that in the observed universe the observer is just another element, and must be treated, epistemically and morally, just like any other.

As Hume says, we can’t derive an “ought” from an “is.” But I only know what “is” because I am objective. And the norm of objectivity is by no means silent about what I “ought” to do. The so-called “fact/value distinction” or “is/ought problem” arises only when we forget that facts are not independent entities, but can only be discovered by an objective observer.

Just as my own drives, urges, wishes and desires have no legitimate influence on my epistemic decisions, so they must have no influence on my moral decisions. Perhaps the reason we’re so ready to invoke fact/value and is/ought distinctions is that the moral rigor imposed by the norm of objectivity is uncomfortably stringent. It demands that I love my neighbor as I love myself. It demands that I extinguish my drives and urges. It demands that I behave as well as the founders of religions. And this few philosophers are willing to do.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Why Do Engineers Need the Humanities?

Despite the vast and ever-increasing evidence that continued energy consumption on the present scale will annihilate human civilization—and possibly the human species—engineers continue to place our intellects at the disposal of the system that orchestrates the destruction. In the twentieth century, engineers dutifully and credulously served our governments, leading to the most murderous wars in human history. In the twenty-first, we dutifully and credulously serve an economic system in which a ten degree rise in global temperature and the resulting devastation are considered “externalities.”

The premise in both cases is the same. A mind must train itself to perform some particular task exquisitely, then dutifully place this highly trained mind into the service of aims chosen by other minds, never questioning the wisdom of these aims.

This premise is almost universally accepted in the present age. But it has certainly not been accepted in all ages. There is a tradition, unpopular if not unknown in the intellectual world of today, in which intellect has a responsibility not only to perform its assigned function competently, but also to question the wisdom of the assignment. In this tradition, it would be unthinkable to give a young mind knowledge of physics—and all the power that entails—without also giving it the critical spirit that allows it to assess the wisdom of the projects for which this knowledge and power will be used.

When we train young minds to reason exquisitely about means, and not to think at all about ends, we should hardly be surprised at the result—exquisitely crafted machines used in a poorly crafted economic system, geared toward short-term pleasures and indifferent to the long-term flourishing of our species. The modern form of education, which teaches science without philosophy, has twice led to the eclipse of human civilization in the twentieth century, and will soon lead to its demise in the twenty-first.

The first thing an intellect ought to have learned is that it is a fine and exquisite thing, which need not—and should not—place itself indiscriminately in service to lesser things. But instead we teach intellect to be modest, as if it had no greater dignity than the tricks of circus performers.

When intellect places itself in service to the commands of a non-intellectual society, it leads to the destruction of that society. This is one of the most important lessons of history. It is a lesson engineers are never taught.

Monday, September 1, 2014

A wager on hierarchy in art

The understanding and the feelings are molded by intercourse; the understanding and feelings are corrupted by intercourse. Thus good or bad society improves or corrupts them. It is, then, all-important to know how to choose in order to improve and not to corrupt them; and we cannot make this choice, if they be not already improved and not corrupted. Thus a circle is formed, and those are fortunate who escape it.
Pascal
A dedication to reading, and writing, the greatest works of philosophy and literature demands that I keep myself apart from lesser works, that I not let myself be distracted by them. They lure me by appealing to the unrefined part of my mind, the part I denounce and detest in the name of excellence. This passionate desire to keep apart from what is low and ignoble is what Nietzsche calls “the pathos of distance.” The problem I face is, how can this pathos exist alongside the democratic pathos that insists there is no above and below?

Is some art higher than other art? I would like to know the correct answer to the question, but there is no way to know without studying the allegedly canonical works. People are divided, and each camp vehemently denounces the other. At least to begin with, I will have to decide without knowing. What if I make the wrong decision?

If there is no rank of value in art and I imagine there is, what have I lost? If all art is equal, then choosing the canonical works is no worse than choosing pop culture. I may find pop culture more entertaining, and I will lose this. My elitism will also deprive me of the sense of camaraderie that comes with sharing a common culture.

What if, on the other hand, there is indeed a hierarchy of values in art, and I mistakenly suppose there is not. In this case, I will deprive myself of some of the profoundest forms of excellence available to the human mind.

One thing we have omitted from the calculation thus far is the question of difficulty. To understand the alleged classics requires far more sustained intellectual effort than it takes to understand pop culture. Whether I count this as a positive or negative will depend on my goals. If I desire to cultivate the mind, this difficulty would have to counted as a benefit, since it stimulates the mind to greater activity. If I have no interest in cultivating the mind, however, the difficulty would be merely an inconvenience.

There is also the question of money. If I exhaust my intellectual energy at work, I will have none left for difficult art. I will need something undemanding, that allows me to relax, unwind, recover, and restore my energy. If, on the other hand, I exhaust all my intellectual energy in reading difficult books, my performance at work will certainly suffer. A devotion to high culture may demand that I maintain a pathos of distance not only from popular culture, but even from ordinary comforts. Comfort costs money. And after I have exhausted myself reading the classics, I will no longer have the time and intellectual energy to earn it.

One of most tragic aspects of the American experience is that we are too busy making money to read the great books, while it is precisely in these books that we would discover the finitude of our needs, and the futility of a life that seeks gratification from production and consumption rather than intelligence and virtue.