Saturday, June 27, 2015

The Virtue of Importunate Preaching

The entertainer has something to show that will please me. The advertiser has something to sell that will please me. Both appeal to my desire to please myself. The preacher, on the other hand, has something unpleasant to tell me, something I don’t particularly want to hear.

Entertainers and advertisers pander to the incontinent part of my soul, the part that wants to fulfill its urges and enjoy itself. The preacher has just the opposite message. He tells me I make the wrong choice when I allow this incontinent part to take charge of my soul. He tells me I must deny all urges except the urge to make my mind, soul and spirit more perfect. He demands I adopt an ascetic regimen conducive to self-discipline and self-control.

The preacher at Penn State invariably begins his sermons with a description of the unsalutary spiritual consequences of casual sex. At first I wondered, why does he begin with the one message that will alienate students most?

Now I think I understand why. Our campus preacher believes it is essential to deliver a message students would otherwise never hear. They won't see it on television because they flip the channel. They won't hear it from their peers, who want to be popular. They won't find it on Google because they never search for it. If students are ever going to hear difficult and important messages about self-denial and self-restraint, it will only be from an importunate preacher who assaults their ears and delivers an unwanted but urgently needed message against the will of his audience.

The reason our campus preacher tells the younger generation about the dire spiritual consequences of their impulsive sexual liaisons is precisely the same reason I preach to my generation about our impulsive consumption. The BMW dealer won't give me lessons in self-denial and self-restraint. My real estate agent is unlikely to explain that helping others is far more rewarding than trying to impress others. I'll never learn the profound spiritual joy that comes from living a restrained, simple life by talking to salesmen peddling intemperate, extravagant luxury.

Our campus preacher asks students if they really respect themselves as they should when they settle for purely sensual hookups with no deep spiritual connection. I’m here to ask my generation if we really respect ourselves as we should when we surround ourselves with material luxury while we allow spiritual virtues like simplicity, modesty and charity to go uncultivated.
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew 6:24
Whereas some ascetics and Brahmins remain addicted to attending such shows as dancing, singing, music, displays, recitations, hand-music, cymbals and drums, fairy-shows, acrobatic and conjuring tricks, combats of elephants, buffaloes, bulls, goats, rams, cocks and quail, fighting with staves, boxing, wrestling, sham-fights, parades, manoeuvres and military reviews, the ascetic Gotama refrains from attending such displays.
Digha Nikaya

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Aphorisms

The struggle of youth is to make it in the world. The struggle of age is to recover what we lost in the struggle to make it in the world.

If my gaze is turned outward, what goes on inside will become predictable. I turn my gaze inward, where the obstacles to freedom lie.

In our quest to rearrange nature and make it better, we have rearranged our minds and made them worse.

I dedicate this moment to the pursuit of truth and freedom for the sake of this moment alone, and not as a sacrifice to eternity.

“I only put my best ideas down on paper.”
“And the worst ones remain in your head?”

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity

Those who devote their entire intellectual discipline to the pursuit of wealth will have, at the end of life, if they are lucky, what others have at the beginning through no effort of their own. But no one has virtue without effort. No one has wisdom without effort. No one has piety without effort. Ecclesiastes is troubled by the ultimate futility of human life. But the erudition and beauty of his lamentations testify to the dignity of a life spent in pursuit of virtue and wisdom. In the end, this too is vanity, but it is sublime vanity, a vanity that gives dignity and depth to human life.

The apostles of greed are supremely confident that pursuit of wealth is what is serious and important in life. Any talk about higher ideals seems to them a manifestation of intellectual laxity. They may listen politely, but inside they are laughing. In those rare moments when their perpetual quest to overwhelm others with their power and magnificence begin to seem pointless, when their efforts to pamper, groom and entertain themselves begin to falter, when the vast array of distractions they have prepared to conceal the true nature of human life from themselves begin to fail—then they too are faced with the vanity and meaninglessness of their existence. But, unlike Ecclesiastes’, theirs is not a sublime vanity, but a merely ridiculous one.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Queerness isn't just about gender

When I learned my times tables, I could count on my fingers and see for myself they were true and right. When I learned it was wrong for boys to kiss other boys, and asked why, no one could give me a satisfactory answer. Other boys wanted to kiss me. Why should I say no? As a result of my refusal to conform to arbitrary rules without reason or logic, my classmates called me queer. I later became part of a community where the word they fling as an insult is a badge of pride.

There is an aesthetic that sees sameness and uniformity as beautiful, and everything different and unusual as ugly. It is not one I share. For me, diversity is beautiful. The courageous soul that seeks to perfect itself in the unique way it and it alone can, that doesn't cringe and cower before the appointed authorities but insists on choosing its own path through life—this is the soul I admire.

Some of the boys that wanted to kiss me had the courage to question their society's arbitrary and illogical expectations in regard to gender, but in all other respects were perfectly willing to accept what they were told. These boys, needless to say, didn't make it far with me.

When a society shares a uniform and undifferentiated medium of exchange, we invariably find that its members begin to share a uniform and undifferentiated passion to acquire this medium of exchange. Those who were consumed with this uniform and undifferentiated passion I always found boring and tedious. It was the ones who had the courage to resist the pressure to conform their aspirations to those of the herd, and bravely nurture queer aspirations that have nothing whatsoever to do with the herd and its medium of exchange—these were the ones that succeeded with me.

"Have the courage to use your own understanding without the guidance of another." This excellent advice from German philosopher Immanuel Kant, if we would follow it, would prevent us from becoming cowardly conformists. Don't let the market decide for you what skills and talents are most worthy of cultivating. Have the courage to use your own understanding to decide for yourself. No person, no institution, no majority, no market, can decide for you.

"There are some people who despise wealth because they have lost hope to become rich," says English philosopher Francis Bacon. The hope to become rich isn't something we're born with. It's something we learn as we learn to conform. And, like all things we learn when we're young, we must subject it to ever renewed scrutiny as we mature.

When a man tries to impress me with his wealth, he only shows that when we are naked together, when I am with him rather than his wealth, there will be nothing left to impress me. His wealth shows he can impress others. But my standards are higher.

"Nothing is truly great which it is great to despise," says Greek philosopher Longinus. External things like wealth, honor, power and reputation will impress only those who can't see past them into the soul of the one who possesses them. Perhaps you could have all these things if you wanted them. But what would you sacrifice to get them? By making aspirations shared by everyone your own aspirations, you forfeit what is unique and interesting about yourself. The independent minded individuals, the only ones who really matter, will admire you for despising the things everyone else admires and striving for what you believe in.

Queerness isn't just about gender. It's about courage. It's about independence. It's about integrity. It's not limited to those attracted to their own sex. It's open to all. We only need to look into our hearts and try to find the courageous, independent, honest soul that has been whipped and beaten until it conformed. We need only free it from its fetters, and help it summon the courage to be queer, unique and fascinating in the way it and it alone can.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Puer Aeternis

In Greek myth the warrior Theseus descends into a labyrinth to slay the minotaur. His lover Ariadne, to help him find his way back, gives him a spool of twine. He ties one end to the door and unravels the spool as he descends into the labyrinth.

Every path we take in life is a potential labyrinth. We too must bring Ariadne’s spool with us. We must retain throughout life the ability to return to our beginnings, to that youthful stage of life in which all paths are open, in which we remain bright-eyed and eager, eager for life, eager for knowledge, eager for exploration.

We can recognize the man who still knows how to find his way out of the labyrinth because, at any age, we find him still seeking new paths in life, never resting on the conviction that he has already found his one true path.

When we encounter someone who thinks he has found his one true path, we know that in fact he is only trapped inside one of life’s many labyrinths. He has no Ariadne. He has forgotten his spool of twine. To explore every path that sparks an interest, and yet never forget Ariadne’s spool: this is the secret to retaining the spirit of eternal youth.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

The Market Is a Stumbling Block

In eighth grade I submitted a paper entitled "Is it wrong to live in luxury while other human beings suffer?" When I got it back, Mrs. Whitman had written in red on the last page, "Do you really believe this, Peter?" No comments or corrections. No engagement with the argument. Just astonished incredulity.

The purpose of middle school in Newton, Massachusetts is not to teach students to think independently and deeply about moral questions. It is to teach them to conform. The majority has already made up its mind. Yes, it is acceptable to live in luxury, so long as you have the resources to do so. Who was this twelve year old boy who had the audacity to question a matter already settled by the majority?

In college I once tried to speak to one of my classmates about whether it was right for a merchant to decide whom to help and whom to ignore based on who could offer money, rather than who was most in need. The response was a snide and sarcastic "Okay, Peter, whatever."

No one wants to talk about whether we make the right choice when we serve the rich and ignore the poor. It seems to be a violation of decorum even to raise the question. We live in a society founded by commercial men, and devoted in its very core to commerce. The most fundamental premise of commerce is that we serve those who can pay and ignore those who can't.

I recently told a friend I'm going back to school. He was eager to know what new market I'm trying to address. The idea that all disciplined human activity is intended to serve the market is so deeply ingrained in our souls, we have a hard time imagining any other motivation for disciplined thought and action.

When Jesus told his disciples he had to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die, they tried to stop him. “Get behind me, Satan!" Jesus responded, "You are a stumbling block to me; you don't have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Mt. 16:23) In today's world, the response would be, "OK, Jesus, whatever."

In America, the individual is trained from birth that he is part of the majority, and must think, feel and act like a member of the majority. When an individual expresses an aspiration that isn't an aspiration shared by the majority, people shrug their shoulders and walk away. A lifetime of such shrugs, I'm ashamed to admit, made me doubt myself. I began to doubt whether my aspirations were worth aspiring for, when everyone else was so indifferent to them. I buckled down and worked for the things that everyone else was working for, things like money, popularity and reputation.

Now I feel like I have wasted twenty years of my life striving for things I never really cared about, but only cared about because I wanted to impress others. My God, how cowardly and foolish I have been.

One of the things that gave me the courage to set aside the goals the world chose for me and concentrate instead on goals I chose for myself is my discovery late in life of the New Testament, whose hero defies the expectations of his contemporaries and pursues the path his own conscience (logos) dictates. Even his disciples expect him to respond to "human concerns"—the concerns of the majority—rather than living and dying in the way dictated by his own conscience. I know for many the New Testament is a source of authority rather than a source of inspiration, and they will disagree with the message I take from it. I hope they will forgive me for interpreting it differently.

No, I'm not trying to address a new market. I'm no longer willing to accept that my life should be ruled by the market. The market represents the aspirations of others. And I intend to spend the last third of my life pursuing my own aspirations, with no regard for whether or not others share them.

Is this selfish? No, I don't think so, for several reasons. First, I believe all of us should pursue our own aspirations, not timidly conform to the herd. By pursuing my own aspirations, I set an example that may inspire others to courageously strive for theirs. Second, one of my foremost aspirations is to help others. I just don't happen to think we help people by giving them what they ask for. We help people by showing them the things that they would ask for if they knew about them, but don't.

The defiant pop music of the 1970s expressed lots of nonconformist and individualist themes, but in the hands of marketers its defiant stance became just another commodity. Now anyone who comes out with a nonconformist philosophy is assumed to be just another producer trying to address this market segment. The tragedy is that even those who negate the very idea of the market in their work are absorbed by the market. The only solution I know to this problem is asceticism. By refusing to accept the rewards the market offers, we make it clear we are not offering something for sale in the market. We are offering an alternative to the market.

My friends and family are in a state of alarm. How will Peter feed himself, now that he has abandoned all prospects of an income? Fortunately, the New Testament taught me how to respond. Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me. You don't have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns. The New Testament taught me to take no care for human concerns like what I will wear and what I will eat. All these things pale in comparison to my mission to help others in the unique way I and I alone know how.

Our age has become very shortsighted. We're concerned how our contemporaries will receive our message, who will pay for the opportunity to hear or read it. We have forgotten the attitude of an earlier, far more courageous age, in which we wrote not what our contemporaries wanted to hear, but what we and no one else could contribute to eternity.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Should you allow someone indifferent to the fate of your mind to choose its daily activities?

If there is a duty to others, it is a duty to become the greatest person you can be. Only then will your help be the greatest help you can give—the help you, and you alone, can give. If you continue on a course of intellectual improvement, the last few moments of your life may be worth more to your fellow men and women than all that came before. If you don’t make the perfection of your intellect your primary purpose, you shortchange others as much as you shortchange yourself. Here's how the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke puts it:
The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense.
If I apply my intellectual discipline to seeking wealth, I will, if I am lucky, have at the end of life what many undisciplined minds have at the beginning. If, on the other hand, I despise wealth and devote myself wholeheartedly to the life of the mind, now my mind is on par with aristocrats from the start.

Your mind comes into the world once and only once. If you don’t develop it to the utmost of its capability, its potential is forever lost. It would be a nice coincidence if the path optimal for obtaining wealth and sensory pleasure were also the path optimal for developing the mind. But in my experience this is simply not the case. You must choose one or the other.

What would you be doing if you were born wealthy, if you had no need to concern yourself with wealth? Why aren’t you doing that now? Your mind is unique. Nothing like it will ever again exist for all eternity. It would be tragic to allow a unique and exceptional mind like yours to be vanquished by the circumstances of its birth. Through rigorous asceticism, the mind can, and often does, rise above its material circumstances.

Your employer is indifferent to the perfection of your intellect. His only concern is how he can use it for his own profit. Why would you allow someone so indifferent to the fate of your mind to choose its daily activities? Instead, find a teacher who sincerely cares about the cultivation and improvement of your mind, and let your daily activities be guided by him or her. Wealth is a false prophet that seduces us with sensory pleasure, and leads us away from the cultivation and perfection of the mind.

In the evening I look for meaningless entertainment. The next day I must do meaningless work to pay for it. If I could only resist the temptation to consume what doesn’t help me flourish intellectually, I would no longer need to produce what doesn’t help me flourish intellectually. Of course production is necessary to fulfill the needs of the flesh. The problem is, I exaggerate those needs. So I’m left with no time and energy to fulfill the needs of the mind. I busily preen and pamper a body hardly different from that of apes, and ignore the one thing that sets me apart from them.

Parents accept a life of strife and servitude in the world to create an oasis of peace and tranquility in the home. They take it for granted their children are destined for the same dichotomous life. But there is an alternative. If we teach our children to shun all comforts and luxuries as effeminate and evil, we open up to them the possibility of a life in which they no longer need the things that can be won only by strife and servitude. Then theirs can be a life of freedom and harmony, and the cycle of innocent and blissful childhood followed by rapacious and conniving adulthood can finally be replaced by something better.

We call expectations of free and blissful life "unrealistic," and for most who hold these expectations, they are indeed unrealistic, because most of us are unwilling to forego the comforts and luxuries that can be won only by strife and servitude. It is indeed unrealistic to expect both luxury and peace. We must choose one or the other. It is indeed unrealistic to expect both convenience and freedom. We must choose one or the other. The ascetic training that allows us to make the right choice must begin as early as possible. The term "spoiled child" is an accurate description. The pampered child is destined to a life of servitude and strife because parents failed to provide training in asceticism. Pampering has corrupted the child and spoiled the prospects for a free and harmonious life.

In the well ordered soul, as Plato conceives it, desires are arranged hierarchically, with the desire for virtue and wisdom at the top, and lesser desires underneath. In another metaphor, the part of the well ordered soul that seeks virtue and wisdom is the driver of a cart, and the parts that seek pleasure and honor are the horses. A soul ruled by sensory desires is like a mob with no leader, a cart with no driver. The horses pull in random directions, and the cart makes no progress toward any destination.

Most of us have at some point in our lives been dissatisfied with the pursuit of pleasure and honor and sought something higher. But as soon as we begin to strive for something higher, we immediately lose the cozy feeling of being part of the majority. In democratic regimes, where conformity to the majority is an honor and disobeying the majority is a crime, it takes tremendous courage to question the values of the majority. Some of us can muster this courage in occasional heroic moments. Few of us can sustain it long enough to produce profound and enduring change in our lives.

In a profligate society like ours even ordinary children become accustomed to a variety of foods contrived to stimulate our taste buds, a variety of entertainments contrived to stimulate our eyes and ears. These superfluous luxuries are so ubiquitous, they begin to seem like necessities. When we grow up and discover these things cost money, we too are eager to enlist in military and corporate enterprises and collect our share of the booty they procure.

Human beings might be tempted to show we're superior to other animals by stimulating our taste buds in ways other animals can't. But we might also perhaps show our superiority by rationally recognizing what our true animal needs are, and not foolishly putting the intellectual excellences that arguably place us above other animals in slavish service to our animal desires.

What is animal in us should be content with no more than what an animal needs. What is divine in us should not waste itself serving the animal, but should concentrate on contemplating the divine. The corporate worker expends the vast majority of his intellectual discipline in making money, and then uses this money merely to fulfill desires he shares with other animals. He has placed the higher part of himself in service to the lower. Not only are the horses pulling the cart in random directions, they have even harnessed the higher parts of the soul, the virtues that make disciplined intellectual activity possible, and put them under the whip. Reason, science and mathematics have been debased and subjugated, placed in service to desires for pleasure and honor. The divine parts of man are not in the driver seat. They are on the ground, laboring to pull the chariot in its mad, senseless frenzy of motion without aim or destination.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Lunch with Jesus

Jesus and I were having lunch, and got to talking about work.

“Perhaps it’s expressed a bit differently in corporate new-speak,” he said, “but I’ll translate it into plain English for you. ‘Here’s your cut of the profits, Peter, as we, your corporate masters, rake over the poor, paying them ten dollars a day while we make billions and destroy the planet.’”

“I like to believe we can have change from the inside.”

“Are you inside a Chinese factory, Peter? Are you inside the living hell our planet is going to be in 2200?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Here’s an example of how the technology you’re so proud of is used. Employees at UPS are monitored in their every movement by corporate headquarters. They jog with packages in their hands in order to satisfy their tyrannical masters. The owners of capital want to increase profits, no matter how miserable the lives of their wage slaves become.”

“The world is much richer under capitalism.”

“Rich in wealth as the capitalists define wealth. The costs of their tyranny aren’t included in the calculations. They choose to build hundred million dollar mansions as they allow the poor to starve, and then ask us to report to work for them Monday morning. By reporting to their office, you show that you condone that inhumanity.”

I looked at the ground. “What can I do? I can’t change the world all by myself.”

“Yes, you can, Peter.”

“How?”

“Just stop participating in the evil. Stop following the inhuman leaders and start following the human ones.”

“The inhuman leaders are the ones who pay my bills.”

“Give no thought to that.”

“How will I live?”

“You will live on the hope of a better world.”

“What will I eat?”

“When people see you starving, they will help you. You can rely on the mercy of others.”

“But others have no mercy!”

“That is why you must not ally yourselves with them.”

“But how will I live?”

“You must ask yourself that question every day, Peter. The answer today might not be the same as yesterday. It might be time to change, as my disciple Paul did on his way to Damascus. It might be time to—“

“To what?”

“Repent,” he said quietly.

I stared to sob. My God, he was right. If I were to spend the rest of my life repenting and helping the poor, it couldn’t possibly be enough to atone for the harm I have done by allying myself with our brutal capitalist masters. Even if I were to feed my flesh to lions, it would not be enough to atone for what my generation is doing to our culture and our planet.

Friday, June 5, 2015

The flourishing intellect

The information passed between generations by means of culture is difficult to quantify, but is certainly much larger than the approximately 100 megabits passed between generations by means of nucleic acids. Some scientists like to call the cultural component of the human intergenerational legacy the “memome,” a coinage in analogy to “genome,” where a “meme” is a piece of self-replicating information. We can also think of culture as the software that runs on the hardware of the human brain. In the same way that the development of the software industry follows a trajectory quite independent of, although of course also dependent on, the development of computer hardware, so the development of culture follows a trajectory quite independent of the biological development of the human species.

Biology sometimes provides an inherent motive for a human organism to continue living—a drive, urge or instinct that makes the organism want to stay alive. Intellectual life is somewhat distinct from biological life, however. A human organism may continue to flourish from a biological point of view, while at the same time its intellect decays. Just as the motive for the continued existence of biological life comes from within biological life, the motive for the continued existence of intellectual life comes from within intellectual life.

“Imitation is suicide,” says Emerson. Of course he means intellectual suicide, not biological suicide—the death of the intellect, not the organism that sustains it. Emerson’s use of the word suicide is somewhat hyperbolic. The biological organism can never recover from biological death. But so long as the biological organism is still alive, there remains a chance that the intellect can recover from intellectual death. “Imitation is an intellectual coma” would be a less poetic, but more accurate expression of the sentiment. Imitation is just one example of a broader array of phenomena that lead the intellect to perish before the organism that sustains it.

The wide-eyed girl eager to learn and grow and develop her mind manifests a healthy, flourishing intellect. The cynical man who believes he knows all there is to know manifests a sickly intellect.

Entertainment, I would argue, is to the mind what a virus is to the body, or what a computer virus is to the computer. It consumes resources in purposeless activity. A mind that is entertained is not growing and flourishing. Of course many forms of culture have both entertainment value and educational value, and these are sometimes difficult to separate. But insofar as we can separate them, we can say that the pleasure a mind gets from growing and flourishing is of a different order from the pleasure a mind gets from being entertained. Only a mind that has given up on growth and flourishing would choose entertainment over growth.

Of course the wide-eyed girl eager to learn and grow and develop her mind may be disappointed by the teachers she encounters. Under the influence of commercial concerns and their elected representatives, education has been transformed. It is no longer a means to help the intellect grow and flourish. It is now merely a means to mold the intellect into a useful tool for commercial concerns. If a mind wants to grow and flourish, it will need to investigate various forms and methods of education and find those best suited to its development. To recover from the damage commercial concerns have inflicted on the human mind, we must cast off our adult cynicism, recover the eager enthusiasm of the wide-eyed boy or girl within us, and return to the library with renewed vigor.

The fact that the ideal of intellectual flourishing has largely disappeared from the public discourse of today should give us a hint where we might look for teachers who can help the mind flourish. We must look to the past, when the ideal of intellectual flourishing was still alive. We must look to those minds most independent of the forces of commerce and politics. In an age where forces that seek to make the mind into an instrument rather than an end in itself are becoming ever more dominant, it is not surprising that teachers with the courage to defy this trend are becoming harder and harder to find.

Where have my own efforts, the attempts of the wide-eyed boy within me to find intellectual nourishment, led? To the German intellectuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth century who sought to bring the concept of Bildung to its highest realization—including their American representatives, Emerson and Thoreau.

Bildung means, literally, forming, building, shaping. The student may have tried many times to build an intellectual edifice. And it keeps tumbling down. The lower levels aren’t strong enough to stand the weight of the higher ones. So the student looks to the teacher for help. The teacher offers suggestions for repairing and improving the foundation of the student’s intellectual edifice. This, as I understand it, is Bildung—a form of education that seeks to prepare the student to form, build and shape his or her own intellect. This stands in stark contrast to the educational practices of today, which seek to forcibly mold the intellect into a form useful to commercial enterprises.

We know that intellectual life sometimes suffers from eras of stagnation. The Dark Ages are called dark because in these centuries the intellectual light was extinguished. In the tenth century intellect was subservient to the Church and was unable to flourish. In our century intellect is subservient to commerce and is unable to flourish. We live in the Dark Age of Commerce.

A mind that makes falsehood and illusion part of its foundation is unlikely to be able to build an impressive edifice upon it. Newton’s laws are a solid foundation for intellectual development. Pre-Copernican astronomy is not. Unfortunately, many students look at mathematics and physics in the same way they look at oppressive systems of law. This is the fault of bad teachers, who attempt to use their authority to indoctrinate students, rather than seeking to persuade them.

Just as a tree can be confined in a small space and prevented from flourishing, so a human mind can be confined to a role and prevented from flourishing. Servitude to the market, whether in the role of janitor or chief executive officer, prevents the mind from developing in those dimensions which have no value in the market. By making the market our God, and devoting our minds to serving this God, we have impaired the development of intellect as much as those who demanded complete devotion to the narrow conception of God prevalent in the Dark Ages.