Friday, August 21, 2015

A Profession Without Principles

I don't recall what principles I was talking about that particular day. I only remember the conclusion of our conversation. "You talk a lot about principles," my manager observed. The implication was clear enough. Not just my principles, but any principles, were out of place.

On another occasion I was faced with a problem I could solve in one of two ways. There was an elegant, robust solution. And there was a quick and dirty one. I wanted to do work I could be proud of. My manager laughed aloud at my childish idealism. "We're here to make money," he said.

Of course not all my managers have been as unscrupulous as these. But higher up in the hierarchy, it is precisely this unprincipled, amoral desire to get rich that rules our economy. I'm grateful to my unscrupulous managers for making explicit to me the true nature of the organizations we work for.

If doctors had no principles, what would happen to our health? If judges had no principles, what would happen to the rule of law? Of course not all doctors and judges uphold their oaths. But at least they have them to fall back on when confronted with unprincipled behavior. What do engineers have to fall back on?

We work hard to be competent engineers because we want to benefit humanity. But how can we benefit humanity if we work for managers and organizations who have no goal other than getting rich? How is it possible to live a principled, moral life when we work in a profession where principles are unwelcome?

When engineers work for the owners of capital, and give them the technology they use to advance their agenda of unprincipled greed, are we really working for humanity? Or are we working for the enemies of humanity? Are we fighting on the wrong side?

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

The Intellectual Discipline Demanded by the Sages

You are the chosen one. But all you do is obey. How can you fulfill your unique mission if you do nothing but obey?

Cultivate self-discipline far greater than any authority could ever impose. Study at least five hours a day for your entire life.

Why waste time entertaining yourself? Study only the most important texts.

Why waste time conversing about trivialities? Conversation not conducive to enlightenment is an obstacle to enlightenment.

Why are you content as a slave of the billionaires? You could be mastering new realms of thought.

Madison Avenue tries to persuade you you’re a consumer, and therefore a worker. You are none of these things. You are a genius. It would hardly be in Hollywood's interest to let you figure this out. You might turn off the television and start studying.

Does commerce have the same dignity as study? If you’re busy with commerce, you’ll never have time to ask this question and investigate the answer. The error of giving commerce higher priority than study perpetuates itself.

The joy of understanding a new mathematical theorem, or a new poem, is far greater than any pleasure you can buy. It is so precious it can be had only with study. Billionaires can’t afford it. You can.

By striving for material things, which the billionaires own, rather than intellectual things, which are free in your public library, you only make yourself a slave to the billionaires. You can spend your whole life working for the billionaires and collect your tiny share of the economy before you die. Or you can sit down and study, and immediately take full ownership of the entire kingdom of thought.

Lost Intellectuals

How many people are there out there who value the intellect for its own sake, and are lost in a world that sees the intellect as a value only insofar as it can be traded for nonintellectual values like wealth, status and reputation? Even at Caltech and Stanford I was shocked how often students would gape in awe at the reputation of the resident intellectual celebrities, while showing little or no appreciation for the intellectual accomplishments that made them celebrities in the first place. Even at the elite universities, most students are there seeking wealth, status and reputation. It's only a select few who genuinely value the life of the mind, as an end in itself, and not merely as a means to something else. I'm sad to say that even philosophy departments are not immune from this tendency to see education as no more than a path to fame and fortune.

Understanding for the sake of understanding alone, wisdom for the sake of wisdom, virtue for the sake of virtue, and not for the sake of any nonintellectual value like wealth or reputation, is an endangered species. I am personally seeking out the few surviving specimens to offer them aid and comfort.

In 1974 American philosopher Marjorie Grene writes:
The theoretical scientist... can focus his whole attention, bringing every relevant clue to bear, on a problem wholly without appetitive or utilitarian implications, he can put his whole heart and mind into the search for understanding for the sake of understanding alone. How can he do this? First, because he himself has been nourished and disciplined by traditions cultivated within his society which have produced this kind of devoted attention to impersonal goals. And secondly, because the society itself, in its deepest foundations, respects those independently self-sustaining traditions of scientist or scholar.
This, of course, was before the Reagan Revolution, in whose wake all traditional values, including the value of disinterested, impartial inquiry, have given way to the appetitive considerations of capitalism. No student today is immune from the perverse influence of the mindset of total capitalism. And what is worse, since all serious forms of literature that offer a counterbalance to this mindset, from Plato to Marx, have been dropped from the curriculum, students are left with no intellectual resources to combat the mentality of total capitalism and assert the right of the mind to exist for its own sake, and not as a slave to the market.

In a set of 1978 lectures titled "The Birth of Biopolitics," French philosopher Michel Foucault articulately and accurately describes the mindset of the neoliberal philosophy that will conquer American politics just two years later. The market, says Foucault, has become a "site of verediction" where all questions about truth are definitively settled. "Verediction," Foucault's coinage, combines "veritas," the Latin word for truth, and "diction," declaring or saying, to indicate the set of practices and power structures that decide the truth value of propositions. The mindset of total capitalism declares there are no values outside the marketplace. The value of everything, from potatoes to "intellectual property" is decided by how much it will fetch in the market. The answer to Pilate's perennial question, "What is truth?" is now, "Truth is what sells."

The governor of Wisconsin recently proposed changing the mission statement of his state's university system. The new mission statement begins by declaring, "The mission of the system is to develop human resources to meet the state's workforce needs." In the brave new world of total capitalism, a human mind is no longer a value in itself. It is only worth educating if it can be employed as a "resource" in service to the market.