Demythologizing salvation by faith

At any moment, I can begin anew to seek to embody my ideal of the good. In order to do so, I must break free of identification with past acts that don’t correspond with my ideal. It’s not that I’m forgiving myself, but rather that my ideal is reasserting itself despite my flawed attempts to embody it. I hope my ideal might inspire me to see my attempts as a noble striving, rather than condemning or ridiculing me for my failures. Each instant is an opportunity to reassert my faith in my ideal of the good, to accept its forgiveness for my failures, and to strive with renewed vigor to live up to its demands. The part of me that failed in the past isn’t the part I identify with in the present. The part I identify with is the merciful part who forgives my past self for its failures, the nurturing part who encourages me to do better. The mistake that makes me most unhappy is to define myself by my failures, as if the failures were my defining characteristics and my striving to overcome them were trifling and insignificant.

If I apply my intelligence wholeheartedly to the pursuit of material wealth, I will use up my intelligence in the process, and, if I’m lucky, I will end up with what many unintelligent people have without effort. This seems to me to be a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that intelligence should be used in the pursuit of material wealth. Intelligence is the capital that, when put to use in the economy of mind, produces more intelligence. The more of my intellectual capital I use up in pursuit of material wealth, the less I have to pursue greater intellectual wealth.

Twentieth-century science represents the flowering of the nineteenth-century humanistic ideal of the pursuit of truth. Now that scientists have discarded this ideal, and consider science no more dignified than any other bourgeois profession, the question arises whether the relation of science to what preceded it has the form of a journey or an edifice. If we disavow previous stages of a journey, we are still where we are. If we destroy underlying layers of an edifice, we fall along with it.

The ancient idea that prayer is a more worthwhile activity than work finds its contemporary manifestation in the fact that intellectual work is more lucrative than manual labor. Of course the contents of intellectual life have changed along with its form. Our thoughts are no longer free to rise up to what we conceive to be the highest pitch of perfection, to our conception of Truth, Beauty, or God. Now we must limit ourselves to something more in line with the needs of the ordinary man, something more democratic, something the market will appreciate. Those who dedicate our lives to thought must adopt, as the goal of our thought, service to those who don’t dedicate themselves to thought. In the past an occasional genius or saint might have been excused from the grind of manual labor by revealing her dedication to Truth or to God. But now the only God we recognize is the marketplace. We all must prove ourselves there.

The majority of intelligent men and women devote our entire intellectual energy to obtaining that which others have through no intellectual effort. This ought to tell us there’s something profoundly wrong with the way we employ the intellect. The intellect, rather than striving to achieve a realm of freedom, places itself in servitude to what it is not, to institutions and principles that can never represent it or express its needs and aspirations.

Where are the genuine leaders?

By obeying the will of the majority, whether expressed in polls or markets, I delegate responsibility for the ethical consequences of my actions to the majority. But groups don't have a conscience. Only individuals do. By letting polls and markets decide which actions are worthwhile and which are not, whom I help and whom I ignore, I forsake moral responsibility for my actions.

Our economic leaders proudly declare their allegiance to the will of the marketplace. If the majority seeks to entertain themselves rather than morally and intellectually improve themselves, then our economic leaders will provide vapid entertainment rather than challenging art. They see it as a virtue to conform to a popular vice.

Our political leaders proudly declare their allegiance to the will of the majority. If the majority is spiteful and vengeful, our political leaders will forsake mercy and diligently cultivate spite and vengeance. They too see it as a virtue to conform to a popular vice.

We certainly need leaders to coordinate our actions. But today’s presumptive leaders, with few exceptions, lead only by spinelessly following markets and majorities. Where are the genuine leaders who have the courage to defy market and majority and stand up for what they believe is good and true and just?

By allowing spite and vengefulness to overtake mercy, we are degenerating into a police state, where those who dissent from economic and psychopharmacological authorities are locked up for decades with no mens rea requirement. By allowing entertainment to overtake efforts at moral and intellectual improvement, we are degenerating into a nation of vapid consumers. Even our intellectuals have become spineless pedants, documenting the opinions of majorities and markets without ever challenging them. Political scientists no longer debate what political order is good and just. They merely document the opinions of the majority on these subjects. Economists no longer debate questions of objective value, but assume a priori that market values are the values they must use in their calculations. Cigarettes and Elmo are included in their calculation of GNP right along with soybeans and Shakespeare.

Democratic double standards

The principle of majority rule doesn’t prevent me from cultivating forms of intellectual excellence that place me above the majority—in particular those that lead to large rewards. But when it's a question of moral excellence—in particular those forms of moral excellence that might demand I use my rewards for purposes other than pampering my precious ego—here I insist that any attempt to surpass the majority is arrogant pretentiousness. When the question is, “Do I really deserve the mansion and Caribbean vacation?” I’m quite comfortable thinking about exceptional abilities that surpass the majority and make me worthy of special privileges. But when the question is, "Do my exceptional abilities and privileges demand that I cultivate forms of moral excellence that surpass those of the majority?"—now I'm suddenly afraid of being pretentious.

It seems to me that a wiser attitude toward majority rule is this. A house that is good enough for the majority is good enough for me. A vacation that is good enough for the majority is good enough for me. I will not hesitate to surpass the majority in intellectual and moral achievements. But any rewards I get from my achievements I must use in ways that show my moral and intellectual excellence, by helping others the best way I know how.

Leviathan

Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of nature, man. For by art is created that great Leviathan called a commonwealth, or state, (in Latin civitas) which is but an artificial man; though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; The magistrates, and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members, are the strength; salus populi (the peoples safety) its business; counselors, by whom all things needful for it to know, are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politique were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the “let us make man,” pronounced by God in the creation.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Chapter 1

If Leviathan, the giant machinery of society, is to continue its great strides of progress, the individual sentient being can be no more than a gear in its mechanisms. If the individual sentient being has a dignity too great to be a means to an end, then it makes no sense for it to play its role in Leviathan, nor ask adjacent gears to play theirs. Leviathan has now succeeded in creating an artificial cell. “There’s not a single aspect of human life,” Craig Venter tells us, “that doesn’t have the potential to be totally transformed” by the technologies of the future. Leviathan has succeeded in completely absorbing the flesh and minds of mankind, and all other parts of nature, into its gears, leaving nothing outside. To fight against Leviathan is hopeless. To try to accomplish something outside of its massive spinning gears is hopeless. And to work within them is to treat sentient beings as a means to an end. What choice does that leave?

Everyone has heard those fables and legends from the formative years of all civilizations which ascribe to music powers far greater than those of any mere art: the capacity to control men and nations. These accounts make of music a kind of secret regent, or a lawbook for men and their governments, From the most ancient days of China to the myths of the Greeks we find the concept of an ideal, heavenly life for men under the hegemony of music.
Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (1943), R. and C. Winston, trans. (1969), p. 17

Now that music, in keeping with the ideals of democracy, is under control of the marketplace, and seeks to entertain rather than to educate, to be ruled rather than to rule, it has, like all the arts that once claimed aristocratic status for themselves, forsaken its role as leader of men and nations and adopted a meek, subservient role. Now, instead of men leading a heavenly life under the hegemony of beautiful music, music leads a stunted, crippled existence under the hegemony of men.

The intellectual immune system

Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon then from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins the journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of the crowd, and by choosing knowledge over veils of ignorance.
Henri Bergson, On Intuition vs. Intellect (1907)

Fast food peddlers are parasites who use the instinctual human love of greasy food to leech our money, indifferent to the fate of their hosts. In my view, all forms of pop culture are like this. They use our instinctual desire to be entertained to leech precious attention, the life-blood of intellectual life, making the host intellectually anemic in the process. Books are better at educating us because they are worse at entertaining us. They are more difficult, so we have to put more into them, and therefore get more out of them. Should it be any surprise that the intellect degenerates when the immune system that keeps parasites at bay has become senescent?

The brutality of a man purely motivated by monetary considerations … often does not appear to him at all as a moral delinquency, since he is aware only of a rigorously logical behavior, which draws the objective consequences of the situation.
Georg Simmel, “Domination,” On Individuality and Social Forms (1971), p. 110

I don't mind being ruled by a man, if he is a good man. I don't mind being ruled by a principle, if it is a true principle. But at present we are ruled by spineless men who bow to markets and majorities. At present we are ruled by a principle which is the negation of principles—the principle that makes the unprincipled whims of unprincipled men, as expressed in polls and markets, the foremost arbiter of the goodness of our thoughts and actions.

Technology seems like a pristine manifestation of scientific rationality, until we look at it more closely. Then we see that it depends not only on the pristine pursuit of scientific truth, but also on the still rationally unjustified institution of private property. The discrepancy becomes more readily apparent when we look at real life engineers, who, despite our pristine rationality at work, use the resources we obtain from our enterprises no more rationally than any other professionals, squandering them on monuments to our egos while other human beings suffer from lack of food, shelter and education.

Is it moral to live in luxury while other human beings suffer?

The question, “Is it moral to live in luxury while other human beings suffer?” must already have been answered in the affirmative. It is, after all, inconceivable, that the leaders of my society could be immoral. In case I begin to have doubts, a panoply of advertising for luxury goods and services reminds me hundreds of times each day that the question is already settled. The tiny voice in the back of my mind reminding me that repeated assertion does not amount to proof is easily drowned out in the cacophony of repeated assertion, so that repeated assertion, in effect, amounts to proof.

Immortality

If, as scientists say, the mind is no more than an ephemeral sequence of electrochemical signals, it’s implausible to suppose my particular sequence of signals will be preserved. Not unless I actively do something to preserve it.

You can be sure there will be plenty of nonconformists in the future, each one searching the internet for comrades. If there is something unique about you, some way in which you differ fundamentally from others, and you succeed in capturing it in writing, then, have no doubt, some nonconformist soul will find it on some bright future day. There’s no need to lament an inadequate afterlife.

Even if, like me, you’re not famous, future historians might still be interested in the experience of early twenty-first century life. They might seek out your testimony to what it was like. The better you are at capturing what’s unique about you, the more likely it is that what’s unique about you will be preserved.

You’re important enough to capture your thoughts for posterity. Even if you have no reason to expect anyone will ever read them. You are unique. You are exceptional. Try to understand what it is about you that is unique and exceptional. Resist the ubiquitous pressure to make yourself useful in the short term. Perfect that unique thing about you. Then you can be quite sure you’ll be useful in the long term.

Why study science?

The command “Say nothing but what can be scientifically verified” says nothing that can be scientifically verified. The advocate of this kind of restraint, if he is consistent, must remain resolutely silent. The question “Why study science?” can’t be answered by science. When scientists attempt to answer it they cease to be scientists and become philosophers—more often than not, incompetent ones.

The new form of Hegelian synthesis

The new form of Hegelian synthesis is to blur black and white into gray. The more subtle form of dialectical thought that sought to understand the reasons for an opposition before abolishing it has vanished.

There are two rational responses to the dialogs perpetually going on inside my mind. The first is to pay careful attention to them, write them down, and try to understand if they have any value. The second is to silence them. In fact what I do most of the time is very irrational. I allow the dialogs to proceed without observing them, consuming attention and intellectual energy in endless rehearsals of a show that will never be performed.

There can be no duty higher than the duty to cultivate and improve the mind. A duty that purports to elevate itself above intellectual development must know that it can’t withstand the scrutiny intellectual development would bring. I must develop my latent intellectual capacities to discover what my duties are. A duty imposed from outside can only impair the process.

The sacredness of simple truths

Kierkegaard taught that it's not knowing the truth that's important. It's how I'm related to the truth I know. I know that 2 + 2 = 4. But I treat this as an insignificant fact of arithmetic. It isn't. Every true statement is sacred. Those who sever mathematics from religion fail to appreciate the sacredness of simple truths. Those who sever mathematics from art fail to appreciate the beauty of simple truths. Socrates taught that it isn't so important to be wise as to be a lover of wisdom. Where better to begin than with mathematics?

Rhetoric and rewards

The cynic claims he is wise because he no longer responds to “empty rhetoric.” But what his lack of response really shows is not that the rhetoric is empty, but that his soul is empty of the higher motives to which rhetoric once successfully appealed. The cynic is certain rhetoric alone will never persuade others to help him. If he wants to avoid being left out in the cold, he needs not eloquence but cold, hard cash. When others ask him for help, he ignores rhetorical appeals to kindness and mercy and asks what’s in it for him.

The life of the cynic is concerned primarily with rewards in all its phases. In the first phase, he learns the skills he needs to earn rewards. In the second, he earns rewards. In the third, he leisurely enjoys the rewards he has earned. A life motivated by higher motives would not have this tripartite division. If I’m motivated by a passion to learn, I will learn for my entire life. If I’m motivated by love for my fellow men, I will work to help them for my entire life.

Confucius advises me to rank the effort above the prize. Buddha advises me to look away from the glittering world and concentrate on improving my mind. When I run around busily seeking rewards and summarily dismiss all who would detain me with their “empty rhetoric,” I show my values are inverted. It is rewards that are empty, while rhetoric alone can help me return to the path to intellectual and moral excellence.

Charm and good looks

In the quest to win friends and influence people, what's more important—charm and good behavior—or money and good looks? The cynics are probably right that most people don’t really care if I’m nice, and care only about looks and money. But if I deceive myself with some false optimism, and keep trying to be charming, I will eventually attract people who do appreciate it. Smile, say charming things, be on your best behavior, even when everyone around you is ridiculing you for the absurd optimism that someone might appreciate it. What matters in the end isn’t the overall statistics, it’s the statistics in the relevant sample space. My optimism will attract people who appreciate good behavior. Then, within that sample space, the statistics will be different. The cynic, on the other hand, will be correct in his assessment of the average man, and will be left surrounded by average men. My beliefs about people determine the sort of people I attract, and are self-fulfilling. By assuming everyone is a genius, I bring out the genius in people. By assuming everyone is a saint, I bring out the saint in people. To me this seems like a much better life than the life of the cynic, even if requires some sacrifice of intellectual conscience at the outset.

Insurrection in the kingdom of intellect

The cowardly mind doesn’t want to get in trouble for having insurrectionary thoughts, but the courageous mind knows it can get away with insurrectionary thoughts as long as it never becomes involved in insurrectionary deeds. We imagine that the present social order must be rational, that we must conform our thoughts to its principles. If the present social order is capitalist, my thoughts must be capitalist, if socialist, socialist, if Christian, Christian, etc. But once we get outside purely theoretical disciplines like mathematics, there is no way to avoid the confrontation between the truth that’s convenient for my rulers and the truth I discover. A cowardly intellect, when it begins to get close to a boundary where further logical thought will lead away from peaceful intellectual coexistence with rulers, immediately backs down. To the cowardly mind, rulers, whether monarchs or majorities, must always be right. Even if the values rulers commend are contradictory, there's no reason to question them. My ruler was rational enough to build the most tanks, the coward reasons, I must be rational enough to fear them

bourgeossification (n): the loss of neuronal plasticity that comes about as a result of seeking to cash in on what one has already learned, rather than seeking to continue learning.

The bourgeois

You will often find a Steinway in his living room. But you will notice that he has almost always given up on playing it. In his value system, there is no point in doing something unless you can do it well enough to make a lot of money. The pomp of earlier aristocrats interests him immensely, because he can hire someone else to create it. The dilettantish pleasures of earlier aristocrats interest him hardly at all, because they demand far too much intellectual effort.

What will take him a lifetime to achieve, others have at birth without effort. Yet this never lessons his confidence that his aims in life are the right ones. If he has any intellectual, moral or artistic excellences that the heir to wealth lacks, the bourgeois might consider himself superior to the heir of wealth. But as soon as the bourgeois degrades his talents to mere means to wealth, any claim to dignity he might have had in the eyes of the heir to wealth, or in his own eyes, vanishes at once.

Why aphorisms?

After his second book Nietzsche stopped composing long narratives. He adopted the form of short essays and aphorisms. Why? Perhaps he feared he would sully and corrupt sentences he wrote in exceptional states of mind if he tried to weave them into a narrative while he was in a different state of mind. Each aphorism represents the voice of a different character. The author of aphorism 1 is Nietzsche(t₁). The author of aphorism 2 is Nietzsche(t₂). The idea that the author is a constant rather than a variable is among the most perilous of all fictions. The idea that a human being is a constant rather than a variable is among the most perilous of all fictions.

Once Nietzsche decided he would no longer attempt to weave a narrative from disparate thoughts that occurred in disparate states of mind, the question must have arisen, in what order shall I place my thoughts? How about the order in which they occurred? Is that good enough? Or should I try to improve it?

The answer Nietzsche hit upon seems to be this: follow each thought by the thought most nearly its opposite. He recognized that to refuse to commit himself to a position, to make his assaults upon truth merely tentative, was among the foremost intellectual virtues.

Read this lentissimo

Repetition and variation are used to excellent effect in music. Why not in philosophy? In fact, what if I were to take this to an extreme, to write philosophy the way Philip Glass writes music, repeating a theme until it saturates the mind, and only then proceeding to the next.

A monk dwells practicing body-contemplation on the body, ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome covetousness and grief concerning the world; he dwells practicing feeling-contemplation on the feelings, ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome covetousness and grief concerning the world; he dwells practicing mind-contemplation on the mind, ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome covetousness and grief concerning the world.
Nyanaponika Thera’s translation of the Pali Canon in The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965)

Nietzsche complains that his readers read him too fast. He wants to force them, somehow, to change the tempo from presto to lentissimo. But how?

One method: repeat the fundamental teachings over and over. Make them into a chant. Nietzsche didn’t use this method. Buddhists, on the other hand, often do, to excellent effect. Repetition, like silence, allows the mind to turn its attention inward. It gives it time to chew a thought, digest it, assimilate it.

The holy division of labor

“The error in positivism,” says Adorno, “is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative.” Once philosophy has been demoted to one specialty among others, it is no more able to call in question the division of labor than the medieval philosophy that served the Church could call in question the existence of God.

When the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was published in 1952, homosexuality was listed as a sociopathic personality disturbance. There is no question that homosexual behavior produced many difficulties in the lives of those who practiced it. The error made by psychiatry was a failure to ask whether these problems were caused by homosexual behavior, or by society’s persecution of homosexual behavior. In this respect, the methodology used in creating the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual remains unchanged.

The language of leisure

The language of leisure is articulate about joy and contentment. The language of commerce is mute. It speaks only of maximizing utility functions. As our language becomes ever more colonized by commerce, we lose our simple joys, because we lose our ability to speak of simple joys. Bombarded with a perpetual message of ‘buy this,’ ‘buy that,’ we have forgotten joys in which money is irrelevant. The pleasure of loving. The pleasure of learning. All one needs for a joyful life can be found in the public library. The rest of our time and money can be reserved for the joy of sharing.

The Science of Charm

Intuition may occasionally lead me to the right answer to a physics problem. But in order to consistently find right answers, I need method. The same is true in problems of human interaction. Intuition occasionally leads me to say and do the right thing. But to be consistently charming, I need a scientific method.

Tolstoy gives a precise scientific analysis of his characters’ motives. Hollywood entertainment, with rare exceptions, sacrifices scientific precision for entertainment value. Peer review is important in art, just as it is in science. The more time I dedicate to peer-reviewed books, the better will be my understanding of human psychology.

My success in science has always been consistent. But my success in social life was intermittent at best. Things would go fine sometimes. But disasters were a regular occurrence. Scientific precision, my teachers said, was irrelevant in the social world. Socializing, they said, is intuitive. There are no formulas. For a mind that lives and breathes scientific precision, this was the worst thing they could possibly have said.

Social life is not physics. But, I now know, the same intellectual virtues that allow me to succeed in physics also allow me to succeed in social life. The teachers who insisted socializing could never be raised above the level of intuition could not have been more wrong. I later learned they were merely the astrologers of social life. There was a rigorous science of conduct they were entirely ignorant of.

A physicist who expects coworkers to teach her the fundamental theories of physics will quickly discover the workplace is not the place were they are taught. What she learns at work is a supplement to her theoretical training, not a substitute for it. Yet we find ourselves thrust into social life with no training in the theory of good behavior. Even if we’re eager to learn, we quickly discover that those who are good at socializing are busy socializing. They have no time to teach us their theories. The most important skills for socializing, paradoxically, I sometimes have to learn in solitary study.

The best way to learn physics is first to struggle to solve a problem without a method. After repeated failures, the method will seem like manna from heaven. No matter how succulent Newton’s laws are, I must build up an appetite for them, or they will taste like bitter medicine. My struggles to reinvent charm were not wasted. After my repeated failures I was ready and eager to learn the science of good behavior.

The same intellectual virtues that give us our exquisite competence in science can allow us to be exquisitely competent in social life too. The astrologers of social life have undermined our confidence. It is time to put them in their place.

p values

If a coin is tossed four times and turns up three tails and one head, should we infer that the coin is loaded? Probably not. For a fair coin, there’s a one in four chance that the tosses would come out this way. It could just be a coincidence. If a coin is tossed forty times and turns up thirty tails and ten heads, should we infer that the coin is loaded? Probably. For a fair coin, the chance it could have come up ten or fewer heads randomly is only about one in a thousand. It is really not hard to explain p-values to the man on the street. If I perform an experiment whose outcome is partly due to chance and partly not, the more trials I run, the more certain I can be that the result was not entirely due to chance. That’s the beauty of statistics.

Denatured philosophy

When alcohol is used as a paint remover, a denaturant is added. The technical vocabulary of philosophers serves a similar purpose. They have made philosophy so artless, no one can possibly derive pleasure from it. Only a philistine can endure it.

Imaginary numbers

When I was in high school, a professor from the local university was invited to deliver a guest lecture to the nerdiest of the math students. I sat in awe as Professor Sherwood introduced imaginary numbers and showed how they could be used to solve second-order differential equations. Could something this bizarre, outlandish and fascinating actually be true? As it turns out, yes. Three decades later, I use imaginary numbers to solve the differential equations that allow me to design cellular telephones.

The awestruck feeling I got in high school is still alive in me today. Now I get this feeling in the presence of the most brilliant philosophers. Material things, they say, are almost entirely irrelevant to the pursuit of wisdom, virtue and happiness. Could something this bizarre, outlandish and fascinating actually be true?

Bourgeois blindness

Both the theologian and the physicist recognize that behind visible things lie invisible things (God in one case, the laws of physics in the other). The bourgeois, on the other hand, shows no enthusiasm for understanding the invisible. He is fully consumed with the visible. Power and wealth are what he sees wherever he looks. It never occurs to him to look for things which require sustained intellectual effort to see. He is capable of sustained intellectual effort only if it is placed in service of things about which he is already enthusiastic: power and wealth. He wants more and more of the things he can already see. He has no interest in learning to see the things he cannot yet see.

I find it helpful to distinguish two conceptions of God. In the first, God is an entity that created and rules the universe. In the second, God is a concept that represents the highest aspirations of mankind. I am an atheist with respect to the first God, but not the second.

Is all truth relative to culture and social environment?

We often hear it said that all truth is relative to culture and social environment. In thinking about this claim, I find it helpful to distinguish two interpretations. The first says, "All truth is relative to culture and social environment. We must accept that we are part of a certain culture and social environment. Things too foreign cannot be seriously entertained." The second interpretation says, "All truth is relative to culture and social environment. We must expose ourselves to a variety of cultures and social environments by reading books from a wide variety of times and places. This will allow us to correct for the bias we have for our own." The first kind of relativist accepts our limitation to our own time and place, even celebrates it. The second sort acknowledges relativism only to go on to combat it.

The greatest philosophers are relativists of the second kind. They ask us to take the questions posed by thinkers of the past seriously, and not sanguinely suppose we have answered them. They aspire to be cosmopolitan and untimely, to transcend the merely personal ties, to cultivate a pathos of distance from hour own place and time in order to understand it.

There is no law but the law of love

One of the ideas that interests me most in the New Testament is the idea that I am not bound by any law but the law to love my neighbor as myself. As Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans,

Owe no many any thing but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

In one sense this idea is continuous with the thinking of the Old Testament. In Leviticus, I also find the commandment to love my neighbor as myself. When Hillel was asked to sum up the Torah concisely, he answered, "What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary." But the Old Testament also contains a bewildering array of laws covering all aspects of human life. The idea that there is no law but the law of love seems to demand, if not an abandonment of all these laws, at least a radical reinterpretation of them.

In John’s first letter, we find an even more radical statement:

No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

This too is in one sense continuous with the Old Testament, where I find in Deuteronomy the commandment to love God with all my heart and soul. But the Old Testament also tells me God is the creator of the universe. Just as Paul’s statement seems to ask me to throw out all laws but the law of love, John’s statement seems to ask me to throw out all ideas of God but the idea of love. John almost seems to be saying I must be an atheist in regard to God as creator of the universe, whom no man hath seen, and believe only in God as love, whom I have seen. The equation God = love seems to call for a radical reinterpretation of the Old Testament. The greatness, power, glory, and majesty ascribed to God in the Chronicles must now belong to love.

Of course the New Testament is very inconsistent. After telling us there is no law but the law of love, Paul goes on to enumerate many other laws and vituperate against sinners who transgress them. John returns to the idea of God as author of the universe. Do these inconsistencies tell me I should consider the more radical statements as exaggerations? Maybe. Or maybe it is precisely these radical visions, and not the failures to live up to them, that constitute the most important parts of the text.

Love one another and ye have fulfilled the law

Hillel the Elder, when asked to sum up the Torah concisely, answered, "What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary."
Shabbat 31a

Love one another and ye have fulfilled the law.
Paul of Tarsus, Galatians 5:14

Enraptured in thought as he walked to Damascus, Paul of Tarsus decided to cease persecuting Christians and join their ranks. When disobedience has a higher motive—love, kindness, truth—how can I not stand with those who disobey?

Gay rights radicals once believed that law must be subverted for the sake of love. Now that our movement has succeeded, however, the old rebellious impulses have become superfluous. Our advocacy of the rule of law is as staunch as anyone’s. Paul’s antinomian “Love one another and ye have fulfilled the law” was a useful doctrine before we had achieved our recognition in law. But now, there’s no need for such a radically disobedient philosophy. Our particular form of eccentricity has been accepted. Why should we continue fighting for the rights of others?

The lesson from our oppression, if we would learn it rightly, is this—we must talk with the oppressed. We must try to find out—are they really so base, so vile to deserve their oppression?

The authorities told me heterosexuality was mandatory. I disobeyed in the name of love. The authorities told them abstinence was mandatory. They too claim they disobey in the name of love. They call their parties “Love Parades.” I demand tolerance for my eccentricities. How can I sit idly by as they are persecuted for theirs? How can I not sympathize with their plight? A bright eyed young man told me he never in life felt more love in his heart than he feels at a rave. I suppose I was a fool to believe him. But how could I not? He had shame and fear in his eyes, the same shame and fear I once saw in my own.

The asinine and elephantine contend to represent the bovine

Socrates’ character in the Republic observes that most of those who constitute the demos care very little for the pursuit of truth, so that the relation of truth to a democratic regime must always be “as a foreign seed sown in alien soil”—that interaction with the regime inevitably results in the “perversion and alteration” of truth—and that the most advisable course for the seeker of truth is to remain quiet, mind his own affairs, and stand aside as a man stands “under the shelter of a wall in a storm.”

A physicist who begins his lectures by making reference to the opinions of the majority about physics would not be worthy of our attention. The study of physics requires a degree of dedication and discipline available only to a select few, and it is only the opinions of this select few that are worthy of our attention. We can say the same thing about every other discipline, including political science.

The majority may rule the state to varying degrees, but it is a grave mistake to allow it to rule my mind, to any degree whatsoever. What sense is there in attending to the squabbles between the asinine and elephantine aspirants to represent the majority, when that majority is intellectually bovine to begin with? Watching the day to day movements of those who lack intellectual discipline is one of the many ways I shirk my own.

Introspection, observing the movements of my own my mind, can be done well or badly. I can pay close attention. I can let my attention wander. I can be honest with myself about what I see. I can deceive myself. Whether my introspection is done well or badly no one but I can decide. There's no chorus of approving voices for a job well done. There are no peals of criticism for incompetence. I must rely entirely on my own integrity. This obligatory self-reliance is among the foremost reasons I avoid introspection. I pay lip service to Emerson, but when it comes down to it, it’s hard for me to dispense with the chorus of approving voices. It’s hard for me to engage in any activity that doesn’t have approval as a likely outcome. The soul searching that knows in advance what it will find—admirable sentiments that I can later show off to win nods of approval—this is the kind of soul searching I prefer. The honest soul searching that isn’t looking for something, but observes for the sake of observation alone, this is much more difficult for me.

All my conversation makes reference to my experiences—a book I have read, a place I have visited, a painting I have seen. Shouldn’t I endeavor instead to show how these experiences have profited me, by revealing something of myself? Yes, I have seen beautiful paintings. But isn’t the present moment also beautiful? Shouldn’t I talk, then, about the beauty of the moment, and let the past be past? There is no greater joy than joining hands and giving thanks for the happiness of being alive together in this moment. Yet I always seem to squander the attention of my companions on futile attempts to recreate the past. When I talk about Vermeer, I show only that I didn’t learn what he tried to teach me. The present moment, no matter how ordinary, can be transformed into a magnificent work of art, if only I would devote my full attention to it.

Meditation and infinity

In everyday purposeful use of the mind, a thought is sometimes interrupted by another thought. In order to remain fast to its purpose, the mind must have a kind of stack, where it records its position in one thought as it is interrupted by another. In normal, algorithmic use of the mind, I must limit the depth of the stack in order to avoid losing my place.

In meditation, however, every thought is interrupted by an observation of the thought. And in this case there is no intention of returning to the original thought. In the meditative state I don’t need or want the functionality of my algorithmic mind, so there is really no reason to avoid a stack overflow. In fact, in terms of my customary algorithmic use of my mind, meditation might be described as a deliberate cultivation of stack overflow. As each thought is interrupted by observation of the thought, the stack becomes longer and longer, deeper and deeper. Each subroutine “Observe this.” is interrupted by another “Observe this.”

In the meditative state my mind feels like it is reeling off into infinity. As the stack grows, I worry that I can’t recover my place in my train of thought. And yet, as soon as I open my eyes, there I am, back in the finite world just as before. I can meet the world’s demands for competent pedestrian reason just as well as before. Of course the feeling of moving toward the infinite is illusory. The mind has a finite number of neurons. But in comparison to the limits I place on the depth of the stack in ordinary consciousness, the meditative state seems to traverse a vast span of emptiness.

For me, algorithmic use of the mind is something like a categorical imperative. It feels immoral, or at least irresponsible, to deliberately produce a stack overflow. But why? Just as I can recover from running “100 GOSUB 100” by hitting the reset button on my computer, I can open my eyes any time and return to the pedestrian algorithmic way of using my mind.

When I was a teenager, I found it interesting to see what my TRS-80 Color Computer would do when I used it in ways it wasn’t intended to be used. It was particularly fun to overflow the stack in the less thoroughly policed world of assembly language, where the stack would transgress its boundaries and overwrite video memory, producing colored patterns on the screen.

There is something very political in using the mind in ways it wasn’t intended to be used. When a leader tells me that God intends me to use my mind and body a certain way, I can be sure what he really means is that he intends me to use my mind and body a certain way. Turning my attention inward, and deciding for myself how I will use my mind, even for a moment, is an act of insurrection.

The true end of knowledge

Contemplate the fact that the Earth hurtles through space at a velocity of more than sixty thousand miles per hour. Contemplate how easy it is to forget this fact. Man is distinguished from other animals by his understanding. We claim this elevates us above other animals. But if we were really proud of our understanding, wouldn’t we often contemplate the facts that are furthest removed from sensory experience, the facts that require the greatest exertion of reason to discover and comprehend? Of course we must have food and drink and a warm place to sleep like other animals. But if we were proud of our understanding, wouldn’t we take care of the needs we share with other animals as quickly and efficiently as possible, and then devote ourselves to cultivating the mind?

The seventeenth century philosopher Francis Bacon, whom R. W. Church called the “prophet of knowledge,” aptly predicted how modern man would come to use the faculty of understanding in day to day life. The true end of knowledge, says Bacon, is not pleasure or curiosity, or the raising of the spirit, or eloquence or wit. The true end of knowledge is to invest man with “sovereignty and power.” When man learns to call everything in the universe by its true name, says Bacon, he will finally be able to command and control everything in the universe. Knowledge directed to any purpose other than command and control, knowledge we cultivate merely for the satisfaction of knowing, Bacon likens to a courtesan we use “for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.” In Bacon’s view, the faculty of understanding elevates man above the other animals only because it allows us to perform our animal functions more efficiently.

The faculty of understanding is now used almost exclusively as an instrument of conquest, whether for conquering nature or conquering men. But, like all victorious causes, the instrumentalization of knowledge has its share of rebellion and dissent. There remains a small minority who have a different answer to the question of how the faculty of understanding is to be used, or for whom the question still remains unanswered.

On prudence, frugality and celibacy

The part which has been affected by the reasonings of this work is not therefore that which relates to our conduct during the period of celibacy, but to the duty of extending this period till we have a prospect of being able to maintain our children. And it is by no means visionary to indulge a hope of some favourable change in this respect; because it is found by experience that the prevalence of this kind of prudential restraint is extremely different in different countries, and in the same countries at different periods.
Thomas Malthus

In a system of private property, those parents who exercise the prudential restraint Malthus recommends, having only the number of children for which a happy life can be reasonably assured, will provide a happy life to their children. And these children, following the example of their parents, will in turn provide a happy life to their children. Families that exercise diligence in their work, thrift in their expenditures, and restraint in their reproduction will, in time, become wealthy and prosperous.

The problem, however, is that the diligence, thrift and restraint required for prosperity are far from universal. And it is impossible for a kind hearted child to see the impoverished children of less responsible parents without feeling pity and sympathy. Our children can’t be happy if they must cultivate a hard-hearted indifference to the less fortunate. Diligence, thrift and restraint are therefore not sufficient to the happiness of our own children unless they are practiced by all. The wisdom which allows some families to prosper must be advertised to the world.

But in fact what we find advertised to the world is precisely the opposite. Each producer tries to persuade consumers to buy his product. Although each one of these attempts in isolation is innocent enough, their collective effect is to drown out the wisdom that must be passed from one generation to secure the happiness of the next. Messages of diligence are drowned out by a perpetual stream of entertainments. Messages of thrift are drowned out by relentlessly repeated cries of “consume, consume.” Message of restraint are rarely heard, and one suspects this may be because the same enterprises intent on selling their products are intent on having cheap labor to produce them.

By spending money on luxuries today rather than saving for the future, we are compromising the happiness of our children. By watching Elmo instead of Hamlet, we are compromising the intellectual development of our children. I hope I am wrong, but I cannot help but think that we have condemned the next generation to unhappiness and ignorance, and at this point there is nothing we can do. Just as in the atmosphere, where enough carbon dioxide has already been pumped into the air to bake the planet, so also in the intellectual atmosphere we have passed the tipping point, and there is no going back. The destructive policies of this generation have sealed the fate of the next. At every step on our irresponsible path we glibly assured ourselves “everything’s going to be fine,” and at the same time refused to practice and teach the virtues that would, in fact, have made it fine.

On Television

Just as the American diet includes far more calories than the body can possibly assimilate, so our intellectual diet includes far more facts than the mind can possibly assimilate. We fill our idle time with news, cramming in today’s facts before we have understood yesterday’s. “The news we hear,” says Thoreau, “is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.” Instead of a daily dose of news, Thoreau recommends a daily dose of Ossian. “I look down from my height on nations, and they become ashes before me.” We’re all concerned that television takes away time from study, work and family. But what’s far more dire is that television takes reverence from study, work and family. Our attention and reverence are no longer directed to great teachers and great books intent on making us better men and women. They’re now directed to celebrities intent on entertaining us.

I imagine the reason we find celebrities so interesting is that they lack intellectual and moral virtues, and yet nonetheless receive honors, adulation and rewards. This is precisely what we most crave. We want to be honored without being worthy of honor. We want to be important without being worthy of importance. Those honored for great achievements don’t interest us. Those honored despite their lack of such achievements fascinate us.

Hamlet requires more intellectual effort to understand. Therefore it is better. Television requires less intellectual effort. Therefore it is worse. “We know people don’t like to make an effort,” say Hollywood executives, “We wont force them. The last thing we want is to alienate our audience.”

The purpose of education is to elevate myself from a lower to a higher form of existence. Education presupposes that there is an order of rank, with the most difficult things at the top and things that require no effort at the bottom. Each active intellect moves in a different direction. Its progress can be assessed only in terms of its own standard of development, which it alone can decide. But no matter what direction my intellect is going, television is not helping it get there. It’s merely distracting and entertaining me.

It’s hard for me to imagine why people find television relaxing. The Hollywood assault on the hierarchy of values in the Western Intellectual Tradition is disturbing, not relaxing. The mind that seeks to develop itself seeks out challenge. When it’s tired, it looks for a different sort of challenge. Meditation transforms leisure from an opportunity to relax the mind to an opportunity to refine the mind. The best use of leisure is to cultivate a profound mental silence. This requires great effort to achieve, but, once achieved, is far more blissful than television.

Television brings a nonstop stream of enticing entertainment to the world. Unlike the entertainment offered by Tolstoy or Goethe, this new democratic form of entertainment is no longer accompanied by subtle enticements to moral and intellectual improvement. It scoffs at all efforts to improve the mind.

The popularity of television is no more evidence that it is good art than the popularity of new-age pseudoscience is evidence that it is good science. The path to enlightenment consists in overcoming and casting off prejudices our peers have imparted to us, taking reason alone as our guide, seeking the most rigorous exemplars of reason from present and past, and hearkening to them and them alone.

The doctrine of laissez-faire, which stipulates that the state may not interfere with consensual private activity, has been broadened in its application. Now we may no longer even criticize consensual private activity. We’re not even sure we should attempt to persuade anyone, even our own children, that books selected by our teachers to educate us are more worthy of attention than television programs contrived to distract, entertain and manipulate us.

The marketplace is exquisite at equalizing supply and demand. But it is indiscriminate in what it supplies and demands. The best we can hope for from the marketplace is the ability to ignore it. To a large extent, we have this ability. But what do we do? We turn on the television. We deliberately invite the primitive and false philosophy of the marketplace into our lives.

That uncomfortable feeling of idleness

Allowing myself to be ruled by duty to my customers and my constituents, I can never surpass them in virtue. Who knows whether that rebellious temptation to do what I will rather than what I'm told may conceal a path to greater virtue? That feeling of idle purposelessness which is so hateful to me may after all be my salvation. It's only by deliberately cultivating purposelessness, after all, that I can hope to find a higher purpose. Aimlessly browsing through books and music, I may accidentally find the poem or symphony that calls my soul to greater dedication to perfect itself, or to greater devotion to helping my fellow men.

Of course if I'm browsing in the wasteland of pop culture, my idleness will be worse than purposefulness. But if I eschew what is easy and comfortable and confine myself to what is difficult, the act of trying to grasp may help me reach new heights. Who knows how many have been called to abandon petty cares and dedicate their lives to virtue by a noble attempt to appreciate a great symphony or a great poem?

asceticism (n): the means by which those who are not aristocrats in fact become aristocrats in spirit.

Are we sure we want a classless society?

In a classless society we would all be in the same class as the greedy shopkeeper. I, for one, would rather resurrect a class society than surrender my entire soul to this class. There must be at least two classes—a lower class which seeks material rewards from work, and a higher class that works solely for philanthropic motives. The ascetic monk who seeks no rewards because his needs are little—the scion of inherited wealth who seeks no rewards because his needs are met—both of these are my equals. The grasping, greedy shopkeeper, whether novice or billionaire, is not.

Those who pursue material rewards become irate when we call attention to their petty avarice. But this should not stop us from calling attention to it. Work without reward is indeed a higher human activity than work with reward. And we should not dissimulate respect for the lower form of work merely to protect its practitioners from feelings of inferiority. Even when we can afford to come up into the pure air of aristocratic generosity, we fear offending avaricious men, we refuse to place ourselves above them, and our souls drown along with theirs in the sea of avarice.

I envision a new class of aristocratic professionals who receive no rewards from work, and advertise this proudly to the world. Those without inherited wealth would take up two professions, one a conventional paid profession (accounting, engineering, etc.) and a second philanthropic profession (medicine, philosophy, art, literature, religion, etc.). Thrift and asceticism would allow us to minimize the time and energy we must devote to the lower form of work. Those who are too consumed with paid work to take on a philanthropic profession would, of course, be pitied. But if they’re wearing designer clothes, perhaps the pity would be mingled with contempt.

We imagine that being paid for work makes it somehow more “professional,” more worthy of trust, dignity and respect. I say precisely the opposite. Of two doctors with the same education, the one who refuses all rewards is more worthy of trust, dignity and respect. She can achieve a degree of integrity not available to the one who must be paid.

The writer who is part of the new aristocratic class will proudly advertise on the cover of her books that all royalties will be used for philanthropic purposes. The professor who is part of the new aristocratic class will advertise at the beginning of her lectures that her salary will be used for philanthropic purposes. We must set ourselves apart from the avaricious class and make it clear that they are false role models, that something better is possible. Will we offend our colleagues? Probably. Are we wrong to be proud? No, I don’t think so. Being content with what we have, we are exalted by our humility. And we need not be humble about that. We must overcome our ridiculous fear of offending the avaricious, and show them the contempt they deserve. Our visible display of contempt is what allows us to teach impressionable young minds that excellent work is the mind’s highest calling, and rewards are only impediments to excellence.

Alienation and monotony

If every day is devoted to making money, the monotony of the goal inevitably makes work monotonous. If I devote each day wholeheartedly to the task immediately before me, and put all the intellectual energy I can summon into doing it well, now work suddenly blossoms with astonishing variety.

To the manager of the factory, all widgets are alike. Everything reduces to a single currency and a single goal. But to the woman making widgets, each individual widget represents a unique moment of life and a unique goal. The key to enjoying work is never to adopt the factory owner’s view toward work. As soon as you do, your days fall in a march to a single goal and your work becomes as monotonous as his.

Devotion to mammon makes our lives monotonous, because mammon is monotonous. Every dollar is the same as every other. Those who rule corporations are poor role models for workers. The best of them know this. They don’t pollute the worker’s ethic of excellent work with an ethic of mammon worship that would corrupt workers and make excellent work impossible.

Some thoughts on religion and mythology

In our everyday state of mind the mind inhabits the body, identifies itself with the body, and looks out upon the world from within the body. Certain Eastern religious texts, as I interpret them, offer an alternative state of mind. The mind takes a step back. It temporarily abandons the body and its cares. The mind’s eye looks at the body the way a disinterested scientific observer looks at specimens. This is the first step. Then, the mind takes a second step back. Now it looks at the mind itself the way a disinterested scientific observer looks at specimens. The mind divides itself into two components, an observing component and an observed component. The observing component strives to attain the highest degree of scientific objectivity in its observation.

The idea of objective scientific observation of the self is certainly not confined to Eastern thought. Descartes, for example, questions whether his senses might be deceiving him, whether the apparent world might be a grand illusion. The state of mind from which Descartes’ arguments are offered cannot be the ordinary one where the mind inhabits the body and looks out upon the world. The state of mind that can cultivate Cartesian doubt is one in which the mind looks upon itself as an object of study. This, I submit, differs little from the state of mind proposed by Buddhism.

Another exemplary attempt at scientific self-observation in the West can be found in Freud’s early writings on the psychopathology of everyday life. Although Freud would later focus his attention on his patients, he began his career with a rigorous scientific attempt to observe the self. This probing of one’s own mind to discover its psychological secrets, I submit, differs little from the probing of the mind suggested by Buddhism.

A scientific state of mind is a state in which we never accept a premise because it is comforting or convenient. In fact, comforting or convenient beliefs must be subjected to an even higher standard of scientific scrutiny, since we know the mind has an irrational tendency to favor them. All the world’s religions include a demand to sincerely strive to discover the truth and bear witness to the truth. This means that all the world’s religions contain within them the intent to demythologize themselves and become scientific.

Every working microprocessor is a tangible refutation of magic, mystery and miracles. Technology relies on a world that is consistent, knowable and predictable. Every time you turn on your computer, you testify to your belief in the invariance of physical laws . The science behind our technological marvels would not exist without a scrupulous intellectual conscience, a strict mental discipline that never allows itself any belief not supported by clear and compelling evidence. It is illogical, one might even say hypocritical, to believe in magic, mystery and miracles and at the same time rely on the technological universe we have created.

This doesn’t mean that we must abandon religion, but rather that we must strip it of its incorrect scientific claims, and leave only its moral core. It is far more difficult to love my neighbor as myself and bear witness to the truth than to believe in an outdated science. We can hardly be surprised that most practitioners of religion leave the hard things undone and focus on the easy things. The founders of the world’s great religions showed us how to demand something higher from ourselves. But instead of following their example, we put them into a heavenly realm apart from us. We revere them. And we completely disregard everything they have taught us.

A demythologized religion, on the other hand, presents its founders not as gods but as philosophers, and treats their philosophy not as an antiquarian artifact but as a serious contemporary contender in the question of how to live. The world’s great religions ask, for example, is it sufficient to obey the law, and allow myself to be as arrogant, selfish and spiteful as the law permits? Or does morality require cultivation of modesty, kindness and mercy as well? Shall I strive for gratification from material things, or by cultivating intellectual and moral virtues?

The world’s great religions provide clear answers to these questions and very compelling arguments for their answers. We do ourselves a grave disservice by failing to separate these compelling moral arguments from the outdated science that happened to prevail at the time they were propounded. Because religion’s demands for modesty, kindness and mercy are mixed in with flaky beliefs in magic, mystery and miracles, we suppose that modesty, kindness and mercy must somehow be flaky virtues. And we’re left believing that the only real, scientific virtues are hard-hearted prudence and cunning calculation.

Even if someone were to reinvent the virtues propounded by the world’s great religions and present them in terms utterly free of superstition, this wouldn’t be sufficient. Because of the contingencies of history, we will always associate these virtues with religion. Unless we confront the emotion-laden historical baggage they carry with them, we will never take them seriously, no matter how scientific the jargon in which they are expressed. If we want to rediscover modesty, kindness and mercy, it will not be by ignoring their history, but by studying their history more intelligently.

By dividing human thought into disciplines, what are we concealing from ourselves? The example I like to use is the case of psychiatry and religion. We are very confident that our society must simultaneously entertain numerous conflicting views on the health of the soul. But in regard to the health of the mind, we are confident that there is a privileged scientific view. The German word Geist can be translated as both mind and soul. If we call the distinction into doubt, we might begin to see questions that division of intellectual labor would otherwise conceal. When the health of the soul was established by a single state-sanctioned church, dissenters did not fare well. What happens to dissenters from our state-sanctioned scientific view of the health of the mind? My impression is, they fare no better.