Tuesday, May 31, 2016

The Buzz Kill

We play half our lives
and work the other.
What time remains to think?

Invincible armor of rationalizations and obfuscations
legitimize our indifference.
How can one feeble voice break through?

Busy looking for fun new games
and shiny new toys,
busy making games and toys
to offer other players,
what time remains
to hear from those
excluded from the game?

Our work and play are innocent,
we hear endlessly repeated.
How could it be untrue?

Of what avail is one lone whisper
amid unanimous electronic shouts?

Intent on denying
suffering exists,
we make suffering invisible,
cries for help inaudible,
drowned out in the mellifluous melody
of consumption.

Uninvited killer of heedless pleasure,
unwelcome enemy of stupefied satisfaction,
keep away from our dens of artificial innocence.

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

On Deliberately Cultivated Ignorance

I make a habit of pointing out things that people would really prefer not to think about, of asking questions that people would really prefer not to ask. When I see conspicuous consumption, I ask an embarrassing question. "Is it moral to live in luxury while children are starving?"

Sometimes people laugh. Sometimes they change the subject. Sometimes they accuse me of asking questions when everyone already knows the answer. "Surely if everyone knows the answer," I reply, "you must know it too." Then I persevere and ask again, "Why is it moral to live in luxury while other human beings are starving?"

The rich are accustomed to living in a bubble of deliberately cultivated ignorance. The suffering of the less fortunate remains unseen and unheard. The homeless are routinely evicted from the nicer neighborhoods. The rich never have to see their suffering. No one has to hear their desperate pleas for help.

The rich surround themselves with sycophants who tell them the distribution of wealth is logical, correct, perhaps even sanctified by God. These sycophants help the rich cultivate the belief that conspicuous consumption is a symbol of achievement, rather than a lapse in morality.

Suppose I earned my money by perfectly honest and noble work. Does that relieve me of the responsibility of helping unfortunate people whose suffering could be relieved by the resources I control?

One of the deliberately cultivated illusions the rich use to conceal their barbarity from themselves is the belief that there's no such thing as a virtuous poor person. Poverty is always the fault of the poor. If a boy is born in a poor family, the rich tell themselves, the parents should have restrained their carnal lust until they could provide a decent life for the boy. If we look hard enough at the life of a poor person, the rich assure themselves, we'll always find a vice somewhere, an error of judgment, a lapse in integrity or morality, some fault that accounts for their poverty. The rich know perfectly well how often their success is due to luck. But they refuse to acknowledge that poverty might also, in some cases, be the result of bad luck.

There's no such thing as the "virtuous poor." There can't possibly be. It would be much too inconvenient if that were a thing. Therefore it must not be. This is the reasoning of those who vigilantly maintain their bubble of deliberately cultivated ignorance.

Advertisers teach us it's a virtue to consume. Every day that message is hammered into us over and over. The opposite message, that conspicuous consumption is glorified murder of starving children, never breaks into the bubble of deliberately cultivated ignorance.

We learned to consume. And we can learn to stop. It won't happen overnight. So long as I'm giving away things and learning to do without things every day, I'm on a path toward asceticism. It's a path I can be proud of. But I can only get on this path after I leave the bubble of deliberately cultivated ignorance. Until then, I will be going around in circles, seeking to glorify myself with a practice that is in fact disgraceful.

Inside the bubble an expensive car or expensive watch is seen as a sign of respectability. Those who have broken out of the bubble see the one who possesses these things as a callous murderer. Those inside the bubble see someone living in a mansion, and think, "He must be very smart." Outside the bubble, we see the owner of the mansion as a fool who can't see the suffering in the world.

Liberal freedom and neoliberal neofreedom

FDR and other genuine liberals recognized there is no way to have large concentrations of wealth without them influencing politics. The 90% income and inheritance tax rates on the rich weren't intended to generate revenue. They were intended to prevent precisely the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few that we see today. Capitalism for ordinary people is a wonderful thing. Small business is a wonderful thing. But when capital concentrates in someone's hands for any reason, a democratic government must take control of the wealthy individual, or the wealthy individual will soon take control of the government.

Today legislators and regulators are in bed with large corporations in precisely the same way they were in pre-FDR America. We're back in the Gilded Age. History is repeating itself because we have forgotten it. Concentration of wealth in the hands of the few means concentration of state power in the hands of the few, and inevitably degenerates into oligarchy. Voting doesn't really help. Elections are easy to rig. The only way to overthrow the plutocracy is to leave our offices and take to the streets.

When we're all small fish, we can all be free. But freedom for the pike is death to the minnow.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Three Legacies of the Romans


The Romans left us three legacies that endured for centuries.

First, the Romans believed human beings who claimed to possess other human beings as chattel should be admired and respected as model citizens. In fact, the more chattel slaves a citizen owned, the more he was admired and respected.

Second, the Romans believed human beings who claimed to possess land and property should be admired and respected. The more land and property a citizen owned, the more he was admired and respected.

The first legacy of the Romans is, fortunately, no longer with us. The claim to own other human beings is seen as abhorrent. Those who make this claim are seen not as respectable citizens but as criminals.

During the French Revolution the Jacobins called the second legacy of the Romans into question. Property owners who feasted while their fellow citizens starved were seen during this revolutionary period not as respectable citizens but as criminals. "Property is theft" and "Starvation is murder" were two slogans often used to explain the shift in consciousness away from the Roman legacy.

We know from history that this revolutionary criticism of the respectability of owning property did not endure. Today owners of mansions who adorn themselves with silks and jewels while their fellow citizens starve on the streets are once again admired and respected as model citizens, in France and everywhere else in the West.

Engels famously claimed the only difference between a wage worker and a chattel slave is that a chattel slave is sold all at once, while a wage slave is sold piecemeal by the hour. Of course Engels exaggerates the similarities. The wage worker must sell his labor to the owners of capital to survive. But unlike the chattel slave, a wage slave whose owner abuses him can try to find a new owner who will treat him better. But the fundamental injustice, that some human beings are compelled by circumstances to serve other human beings, remains unchanged.

Along with the tradition of admiring and respecting those who feast while others starve, the Romans of course also bequeathed to us a third legacy, a humanist, literary tradition that refuses to admire the beautiful mansions and jewels of the rich, that refuses to ignore the human suffering underlying symbols of wealth and refuses to gape in awe at them.

The first century Roman poet Juvenal, for example, ridicules the Roman tendency to equate possessions with respectability. Here is a passage from his Satires, beautifully translated by John Dryden:
The question is not put how far extends
His piety, but what he yearly spends;
Quick, to the business; how he lives and eats;
How largely gives; how splendidly he treats;
How many thousand acres feed his sheep;
What are his rents; what servants does he keep?
The account is soon cast up; the judges rate
Our credit in the court by our estate.
Which tradition is ascendent in our culture today? The one that gapes in awe at the symbols of wealth? Or the one that sees the suffering behind and beneath them? The answer is clear enough. Celebrities who feast in million dollar mansions while others starve on the streets are admired and respected. We don't see them as murderers as the Jacobins did. We hold them up as role models.

Humanist Matthew Arnold offers us a name for those who admire material opulence while failing to see the material suffering caused by the choice to use resources on feasts rather than on food for the hungry, on mansions rather than on shelters for the homeless:
The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines.
When we talk about the philistinism of Hollywood and Madison Avenue, we aren't just talking about bad taste. We're talking about a profound lapse of morality. A culture produced by directors and actors who feast in mansions while others starve on the streets is not merely aesthetically corrupt. It is morally corrupt.

The exquisite means of reproduction electrical engineers have created is now used to transmit our corrupt message to people across the globe. As Marx aptly points out, those who own the means of material production also own the means of ideological production, and can teach us to admire them rather than seeing them as the murderers they are.

Yoga Aphorisms for a Digital Age


Mircea Eliade in 1933

Reading Mircea Eliade’s Yoga: Immortality and Freedom puts me into a meditative state. I devote my full attention to thought. The conversation of mind and body is a dialog of equals—as opposed to the ordinary state, where the mind feels like no more than a part of the body, something inside the body, something subservient to the body.

The software’s purpose is not to serve the computer. The computer’s purpose is to serve the software. Apply this to the relation of mind and body.

The mind is accustomed by millions of years of evolution to serving the body. When the mind rebels and begins to develop its own agenda, feelings of guilt immediately ensue. It’s as if a devoted servant one day decides to abandon his master. Genuine freedom comes only after the servant has overcome not only the habit of obedience, but also the guilt he feels with every lapse in obedience.

Long training in obedience makes my mind crave a master to obey. The body is always close at hand, always ready and willing to reassert its dominance.

Maybe I could find a meditation master, to whom I could submit my mind, at least in the interim period, while it learns to overcome long-trained habits of obedience. But this too has its dangers.

In all but one in thousands, the mind is ruled by the body. Minds that dare to rebel against the rule of the body must therefore contend not only with the body but also with other minds that remain in servitude.

The mind in servitude is always supremely confident of the rightness of its servitude. Such a mind considers even the slightest suggestion of disloyalty treasonous and heretical, and will tolerate no mention of disobedience.

Not only will the body try to bring the mind back into subjugation, but other subservient minds will do their part to persuade the mind it made the wrong choice when it fled from its master.

The minds of my brother and sister and father and mother have not liberated themselves from servitude.

A friendship between mind and body can be reestablished only after the body understands it is a conversation partner, not a master.

When a dog whines, it must be ignored. Otherwise, I train it to whine. Apply this to the body.

When a child makes impatient demands rather than polite requests, it must be ignored. Apply this to the body.

A servant who is confident the rule of his master is inevitable finds all talk of disobedience foolish and irresponsible. Obedience will please the master. It will lead to rewards. Disobedience will displease the master. It will lead to punishment. When I tell the servant it is possible to dispense with the rewards and endure the punishment, he laughs.

Rule of mind by body supports and reinforces rule of mind by majority. The majority can offer pleasures to the body. It can threaten the body.

Rule of mind by majority supports and reinforces rule of mind by body. The majority of minds obey bodies. My mind wants to conform.

Rule of mind by body and rule of mind by majority thus mutually support and reinforce one another. To free myself from either, I must free myself from both.

A woman sees my body. She imagines her conversation partner is a body. But it’s not my body that speaks and listens. It’s my mind. I know this. But does she know this? If I’m not cautious, her conception of me as a body will become my conception of myself. Every conversation with another person threatens to trick my mind into associating itself with the body in which it happens to reside.

This body I am dragging around is not me. I am mind. I am soul. I am spirit. All that which is impermanent is not me. I am pure, eternal awareness, uncorrupted by any attachment to the world.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Are you making progress toward understanding yourself and your world?


Georg Simmel in 1914

Are you making progress toward understanding yourself and your world? Or are you trapped in a cycle of repetitive work and repetitive attempts to produce pleasure? Are you on a path to realize your intellectual potential? Or have you given up on your mind and settled into a stagnant cycle of mindless work and mindless pleasure? Whom do you allow to direct the day to day motions of your mind? Is it a teacher who genuinely cares for your mind and wants to nurture it? Or is it an entertainer who tries to make money from you by pandering to your weakness?

When we seek entertainment rather than intellectual challenge, we abandon what is highest in ourselves and try desperately to console ourselves by indulging the mindless senses. Then, to pay the bills for our futile attempts at sensory gratification, we report to work. There we face managers indifferent to our intellectual flourishing, intent only on their own profit.

You can break the mindless cycle at any moment. Stop the mindless consumption. Then you will accumulate some capital and soon be free to stop the mindless production. Then you can finally get off the treadmill and begin pursuing your own unique path to understanding yourself and your world.

All things in the sea, living and dead, have the same density. If their density were higher they would sink to the bottom. If it were lower they would float to the top. And so it is with commerce. Trade equalizes everything so it has the same density. Things that are worth more in the market expand in size. Things that are worth less contract. This is what Georg Simmel means when he says:
Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money.
In order to experience the true qualitative difference between values—the superiority of flourishing to stagnation, of love to calculation, of piety to cynicism, of kindness to cunning—you must leave the world of commerce behind. Then you can finally experience the freedom of living in the open air, outside the suffocating stream of money.

A lifetime of honest, diligent, devoted work in the world of commerce leaves you with exactly the same type of success as swindlers, conmen, prodigal heirs and retired dictators who flee to New York with their money. As soon as you have accepted the premise that the dollar is the measure of value in your serious work, you have decided everything that was unique and exceptional about you will be reduced to a single dimension, measured in dollars. Even if you succeed, your life adds up in the end to no more than what others have at the beginning through no effort of their own.

A lifetime of honest, diligent, devoted work in the world of intellect, on the other hand, allows you to leave behind the unique contributions your mind and your mind alone can achieve. A mind like yours has never come into existence before and never will again. It deserves its chance to leave its irreplaceable mark on history.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Don't Serve the Rich
Serve the True and the Good

A mind that spends its life in pursuit of wealth may achieve at its end what many undisciplined minds have at the beginning through no effort of their own. A mind that devotes itself to intellectual and moral perfection reaches new heights of excellence with each passing year. Which life have you chosen? It's never too late to change your mind and make the right choice.

The idea that a fine mind like yours should devote itself to a goal no different from the mediocre minds of shopkeepers would be absurd if it weren't so tragically common. Of course we have to devote a small amount of intellectual effort to meeting our physical needs. But those who devote their intellectual life to obtaining luxuries and status symbols only show how low a value they set on intellect.

If you are at all disposed to think and study, the value of your mind far surpasses all the wealth mindless shopkeepers can ever offer you. They try to lure you into their web by offering you glittering prizes. Don't be fooled. The sacred temple of the mind, where human beings pursue the excellences that set us apart from animals, is to them no more than a factory. Once you enter their world you have conceded your exquisite mind is fit to be ruled by mediocre minds who inherit their wealth, by devious and cunning minds who have figured out how to scam the system, by retired dictators who flee to New York with their money, and by any other con artist or scam artist who happens to have dollars in his hands.

Your employer tells you he is interested in your intellectual development. But look more closely at what he means by intellectual development. You will see he means finding ways to serve him better, not finding ways to perfect your mind so it will serve only the true and the good.

Nothing like your mind has ever come into existence before. Nothing like your mind will ever come into existence again. Don't squander this opportunity to become perfect in precisely the way you and you alone can.

The saints and sages are there waiting for you to read and study. They are willing to tell you how to set your mind on a path toward excellence. But you will never read them if you're too busy listening to inferior minds with dollars in their hands.