A reflection on my faith in God, past and present, and a response to missionaries who try to recruit me to their faith.
Investigating the history of early Christianity did much to
reshape completely the way I think about religion (all religion). I
began my research believing that the Great Apostasy was historical, that
there was a primitive church of Christ identifiable in history whose
form was somehow perverted between 30-33 AD and 1820. When I read
people like Martin Luther calling for a return to primitive
Christianity, I thought they were speaking historically (as I think they
often meant to, though neither they nor Joseph Smith ever really
separated history from theology as much as moderns do). But the more I
learned about early Christianity and the branches of the faith that
survived to the present (and those that died), the less my original
narrative made any sense. Today, I think the Great Apostasy is just the
Mormon version of a widespread early Protestant delusion (that there
was a unitary primitive Christian church and that our denomination
represents its only or at least its most legitimate successor).
Paradoxically, I find myself agreeing with G. K. Chesterton, who
called the Reformation an atheist movement. I see where he was wrong
(not all Protestants are atheists), but for me (and many people I know,
Mormon and not) he was right. Taking faith away from God (a mystery
outside time and space) and putting it in history (specific events that
happened or didn’t) and historical things (e.g. the Bible) leads people
like me inevitably to atheism (when we read the holy books and the
history and discover incoherence and human vanity masquerading as divine
certainty all over the place).
I am not against God. I rather think I am for him, insofar as he
represents good things about humanity. But when he represents pieces of
humanity that I find abhorrent, I cannot support that (e.g. most of the
OT, and even many sentiments in the New: the only books that I
consistently read with enjoyment are Ecclesiastes, the Gospels, and
James). The repeated claim that someone understands God better than
someone else I find historically extremely problematic, since it is
traditionally advanced in order to make one person subject (in ways that
I find immoral) to another. Also, I don’t see the hand of God in
history. A Deist god (the Platonic demiurge who sets the world going
and then steps back to let it unwind ad libitum) I might admit as a
possibility, but the problem of evil appears in my mind too large and
glaring to be undone by the reassurance that poor children dying in
agony as a result of natural disasters (leaving aside manmade ones for
the moment) will be rewarded in another life. Why would a personal,
loving God send tsunamis or tse-tse flies to torture small children, too
little and ignorant to have done anything to warrant that kind of
punishment? I cannot answer, and try as I might I don’t see God
providing one in history. (All history provides is theologians telling
Job to quit whining and consider that he is an idiot to trust his eyes.
I don’t dispute that I am an idiot, or that my eyes can play tricks,
but that doesn’t actually make life better--for me or the kids dying out
there. I have spent years asking God, “Where is the pavilion covering
thy hiding place?” and the only answer I get is that it is everywhere,
everywhere and nowhere.)
I will confess too that I prefer models of divinity which make it
less powerful (and/or less good), since these seem more like reality to
me. I actually like the Mormon god(s) more than some versions of the
Abrahamic one (worshipped by Jews, Christians, and Muslims), precisely because he is not (at
least not necessarily) all-powerful, all-knowing, and the rest of it.
He is just a being like us, only at some remove. (Maybe he doesn’t send
the tsunamis and tse-tse flies. Maybe he would block them if he
could.) I like “pagan” gods (who like the universe are sometimes just
dicks: Apollo gets mad for no real reason and starts killing people
because he can, just like the tse-tse flies). But I also like the idea
of God as something ineffable and impossibly remote (the reality outside
our limited ability to understand or express): I just don’t see this
reality as necessarily kind or cruel. Like the world, it is simply
there, giving some of us sunshine and others tsunamis (kind of like Zeus
reaching into his two jars and tossing blessings and curses at random
on everybody).
The more I have interacted with believers and non-believers in all
kinds of different traditions, the less I believe in the utility of
“missionary work” (at least as it exists in most traditions
historically). There is a place for sharing with others. We can help
each other, and we can talk about the thoughts and practices that give
our individual lives meaning, but it is presumptive and wrong-headed to
insist that others come around to our ways and leave their own (against
their will). There is nothing inherently superior in any historical
religion, nothing that makes it objectively better for all people
everywhere than whatever other religion they happen to be practicing at
the moment. There are superior people, people who practice their
religion better than other people, but their superiority is not a matter
of transferrable doctrine or ritual but something integral to
themselves, an expression of their individually outstanding moral
character. We can learn from these people. We can respect them. But
real learning and respect is not about wearing the clothes they wear,
saying the prayers they say, believing the doctrines they believe, etc.
It is about cultivating our own moral excellence, looking into the
depths of our own spirit and bringing out the best aspects of the
humanity that we find there. That humanity is not all-knowing or
all-powerful or anything similar. It is weak. It makes mistakes. But
it can learn from those mistakes. It can be kind as well as cruel. It
can repent. It can find and cultivate all kinds of beauty in the
strangest places. I believe in it. I believe in people, even if I
find our gods mostly fictions (some more infantile than others, but in
the end we are all just children playing in the sand, building castles
that the tide washes away the way it always has).
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Taming Human Nature
This morning a vivid image came to my head as I was walking home in the rain after dropping my boys off at preschool.
Imagine that pleasure and pain are the same thing: emotion. Now imagine that your soul is a nice little valley, and emotion is a large river running through it (providing fresh water, fish and other wildlife, hydropower, etc.). Naturally, the nature of the river Emotion is going to vary over time. Sometimes, when the winter snows melt or heavy rains fall, the river will become rough and turgid, rising up and flooding the valley of Soul with dark water. It will destroy things. Other times it will be smooth, clear, and peaceful. It will create things.
Human nature is to observe things and react. We see the river Emotion. We observe how it changes over time, and we naturally want to minimize the harm its flooding causes and maximize the good that comes from its calm. For some of us, this means building a giant dam to hold it back (and maybe release some of its energy in a controlled fashion to accomplish some specific tasks, like creating energy for the community and washing out wastes from the artificial lake created by the dam). There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, nothing at all. But not all rivers are easily dammable (because nature makes each valley unique), and sometimes damming brings unexpected consequences (drastically altering the environment in the soul valley in ways that might be worse for its health than some seasonal flooding).
In my valley of Soul, I built the strongest dam I could come up with. I followed the best blueprints I could find to construct a wall that would tame the river Emotion completely and indefinitely. But my river was not one of those easy to dam. The artificial lake I created became a breeding ground for bad things, anxieties that festered and spread like noxious algae, poisoning the atmosphere of my little soul valley. Then, to make matters worse, my perfect dam began to leak. At first, the leaks were small and manageable: all I needed to clean them up were a few Dutch boys with some basic engineering skills. But as time progressed, the viability of this maintenance crew proved less and less, until one day, the dam broke, and my valley was hit with the flood of the century.
The flood utterly destroyed my old dam, along with many of the improvements and opportunities that that dam afforded. Because of this experience, I was obliged to rethink everything I thought I knew about soul valleys (mine in particular) and dams. I went back to the drawing board, with a new team of engineers, since my Dutch boys had no clue what had happened or what to do about it (other than rebuild the old dam and hope that the recent flood was simply a fluke). As I rethought things and consulted with new engineers, I learned many things about the nature of soul valleys and emotional rivers (my own and those elsewhere in universe of humanity).
Meanwhile, my valley began to recover from the massive flooding. Life returned to an equilibrium. Time passed, and I still had not replaced the old dam. I had spent years in terror of what would happen to me without the protection of that dam, of the seasonal flooding that some said would utterly destroy life in my valley. As it turned out, the seasonal floods were nothing compared to the collapse of the dam: my valley recovered nicely from them. In fact, they were actually kind of pleasant, a much tamer version of the wild water that destroyed the dam. Also, I realized that the environment was much better without that great stagnant lake of fear around, the lake whose black darkness the dam had created and then vomited all over my valley of Soul. Why remake that lake, I wondered to myself?
Everything I heard from the engineers convinced me that my valley was always going to be flooded at one time or another, and it seemed to me that regular seasonal floods were much easier to manage (and much more pleasant) than occasional tsunamis. The deciding factor in my decision not to rebuild the dam was how lovely life without the lake was, though. Some people like lakes. Some lakes are really quite likable. But mine wasn't. I did not like it. Why rebuild something unnecessary and unpleasant? People who like artificial lakes in their soul valleys are always telling me how much fun they have in them, how they make so many nice and convenient things possible (advanced hydropower, irrigation, fishing, water-skiing), and I don't deny that. But my lake was not like that (or perhaps better, was not just that). It was also a home for the Loch Ness Monster, whom I am very glad to be rid of.
People who want absolute control over their valley of Soul see me as backwards, chaotic, primitive, and uncivilized because I have not dammed the river Emotion. I let her follow her natural currents. When she floods, I am flooded. When she dries up, I am dry. It is not always easy or pleasant. But neither was having a dam. Every choice we make in dealing with Emotion will necessarily involve both pleasure and pain. Every valley is different, with different inhabitants who value different things (and have different traditions, different types of culture that allow them to live in the unique habitat nature has given them). In my valley, we live better with natural rhythms, and no dam. We aren't out to dynamite your dam, at all, but we aren't going to build one for ourselves, either. We know what it will do to our valley. We have seen it, and we did not like it. Much as you like dams (in your valley), we dislike them more (in our valley: we like them fine in yours, if you want them there). Much as you hate seasonal floods (in your valley), we like them more (in ours, where they are part of the rhythm that gives our life shape and meaning: we need them for the same reason that you need dams).
Recently a number of people have reached out to me, offering to help me build dams (or at least attend meetings where teams of Dutch boys tell us how to make the sort of dam that once graced my valley). Much as I appreciate the offer, I really don't need a dam (certainly not one like that), and I am not really interested in spending a lot of time discussing the proper design for something that is useless to me. (One does not go to study with a master trumpeter if one wishes to learn the violin. As beautifully as you might play the trumpet, it is not my instrument, and I am not going to spend hours learning it, though I am happy to listen to you play sometimes.) To quote a venerable old book, your love and interest are much appreciated, but I would be at Jerusalem.
Imagine that pleasure and pain are the same thing: emotion. Now imagine that your soul is a nice little valley, and emotion is a large river running through it (providing fresh water, fish and other wildlife, hydropower, etc.). Naturally, the nature of the river Emotion is going to vary over time. Sometimes, when the winter snows melt or heavy rains fall, the river will become rough and turgid, rising up and flooding the valley of Soul with dark water. It will destroy things. Other times it will be smooth, clear, and peaceful. It will create things.
Human nature is to observe things and react. We see the river Emotion. We observe how it changes over time, and we naturally want to minimize the harm its flooding causes and maximize the good that comes from its calm. For some of us, this means building a giant dam to hold it back (and maybe release some of its energy in a controlled fashion to accomplish some specific tasks, like creating energy for the community and washing out wastes from the artificial lake created by the dam). There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, nothing at all. But not all rivers are easily dammable (because nature makes each valley unique), and sometimes damming brings unexpected consequences (drastically altering the environment in the soul valley in ways that might be worse for its health than some seasonal flooding).
In my valley of Soul, I built the strongest dam I could come up with. I followed the best blueprints I could find to construct a wall that would tame the river Emotion completely and indefinitely. But my river was not one of those easy to dam. The artificial lake I created became a breeding ground for bad things, anxieties that festered and spread like noxious algae, poisoning the atmosphere of my little soul valley. Then, to make matters worse, my perfect dam began to leak. At first, the leaks were small and manageable: all I needed to clean them up were a few Dutch boys with some basic engineering skills. But as time progressed, the viability of this maintenance crew proved less and less, until one day, the dam broke, and my valley was hit with the flood of the century.
The flood utterly destroyed my old dam, along with many of the improvements and opportunities that that dam afforded. Because of this experience, I was obliged to rethink everything I thought I knew about soul valleys (mine in particular) and dams. I went back to the drawing board, with a new team of engineers, since my Dutch boys had no clue what had happened or what to do about it (other than rebuild the old dam and hope that the recent flood was simply a fluke). As I rethought things and consulted with new engineers, I learned many things about the nature of soul valleys and emotional rivers (my own and those elsewhere in universe of humanity).
Meanwhile, my valley began to recover from the massive flooding. Life returned to an equilibrium. Time passed, and I still had not replaced the old dam. I had spent years in terror of what would happen to me without the protection of that dam, of the seasonal flooding that some said would utterly destroy life in my valley. As it turned out, the seasonal floods were nothing compared to the collapse of the dam: my valley recovered nicely from them. In fact, they were actually kind of pleasant, a much tamer version of the wild water that destroyed the dam. Also, I realized that the environment was much better without that great stagnant lake of fear around, the lake whose black darkness the dam had created and then vomited all over my valley of Soul. Why remake that lake, I wondered to myself?
Everything I heard from the engineers convinced me that my valley was always going to be flooded at one time or another, and it seemed to me that regular seasonal floods were much easier to manage (and much more pleasant) than occasional tsunamis. The deciding factor in my decision not to rebuild the dam was how lovely life without the lake was, though. Some people like lakes. Some lakes are really quite likable. But mine wasn't. I did not like it. Why rebuild something unnecessary and unpleasant? People who like artificial lakes in their soul valleys are always telling me how much fun they have in them, how they make so many nice and convenient things possible (advanced hydropower, irrigation, fishing, water-skiing), and I don't deny that. But my lake was not like that (or perhaps better, was not just that). It was also a home for the Loch Ness Monster, whom I am very glad to be rid of.
People who want absolute control over their valley of Soul see me as backwards, chaotic, primitive, and uncivilized because I have not dammed the river Emotion. I let her follow her natural currents. When she floods, I am flooded. When she dries up, I am dry. It is not always easy or pleasant. But neither was having a dam. Every choice we make in dealing with Emotion will necessarily involve both pleasure and pain. Every valley is different, with different inhabitants who value different things (and have different traditions, different types of culture that allow them to live in the unique habitat nature has given them). In my valley, we live better with natural rhythms, and no dam. We aren't out to dynamite your dam, at all, but we aren't going to build one for ourselves, either. We know what it will do to our valley. We have seen it, and we did not like it. Much as you like dams (in your valley), we dislike them more (in our valley: we like them fine in yours, if you want them there). Much as you hate seasonal floods (in your valley), we like them more (in ours, where they are part of the rhythm that gives our life shape and meaning: we need them for the same reason that you need dams).
Recently a number of people have reached out to me, offering to help me build dams (or at least attend meetings where teams of Dutch boys tell us how to make the sort of dam that once graced my valley). Much as I appreciate the offer, I really don't need a dam (certainly not one like that), and I am not really interested in spending a lot of time discussing the proper design for something that is useless to me. (One does not go to study with a master trumpeter if one wishes to learn the violin. As beautifully as you might play the trumpet, it is not my instrument, and I am not going to spend hours learning it, though I am happy to listen to you play sometimes.) To quote a venerable old book, your love and interest are much appreciated, but I would be at Jerusalem.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Happiness
It occurred to me today that happiness is not something definite or concrete. It is a method of walking, not a particular trail (marked with signposts that all can follow to a single destination). For much of my life, I was obsessed with finding the right trail, when what really mattered was not where I walked, but how.
This reminds me of the famous song from Facundo Cabral, and of course the great poem by Antonio Machado ("Proverbios y cantares XXIX," Campos de Castilla, pub. 1912):
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.
Thinking these thoughts and reading this poem reminds me that I really want to walk the Camino de Santiago one day. That for me would be a path of great happiness.
This reminds me of the famous song from Facundo Cabral, and of course the great poem by Antonio Machado ("Proverbios y cantares XXIX," Campos de Castilla, pub. 1912):
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante, no hay camino,
sino estelas en la mar.
Thinking these thoughts and reading this poem reminds me that I really want to walk the Camino de Santiago one day. That for me would be a path of great happiness.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Enlightened Hedonism?
Some friends recently decided to end their marriage (amicably), after discussing (in a public forum) the paradox of choice (the more choices we have, the more dissatisfied we become with any single choice). One of my friends remarked that for him this meant that marriage contracts might be better made for brief periods (e.g. five years) rather than for one's entire life. This discussion and the events around it got me thinking about my own relationships, and what holds them (and me) together.
I see the paradox of choice, and I think it is part of human nature. As with other aspects of human nature, it is better dealt with than ignored. (To ignore it is to invite it to find you unprepared, leading you to make decisions that you are likely to regret later, with the benefit of hindsight. Personally, I like to know my enemies, including the one who dwells between my ears, and keep them close when I cannot avoid them entirely.)
To make a choice is necessarily to make oneself vulnerable (to disillusionment, disappointment, unexpected consequences, etc.), especially when the choice involves something truly momentous (as the choice to get married undoubtedly does). But not choosing is also weak, since choices are a necessary part of life (much as intimacy is: as bad as a bad marriage is, no marriage at all might be just as bad). How do we allow choice without letting it take us places where we do not want to go? Historically, people create narratives that allow them to "have their cake and eat it too" -- narratives that promise future choices (maybe an eternity of them) in return for making a limiting choice here and now. Oftentimes, these narratives seek to be prescriptive, telling people what choices are acceptable (e.g. monogamous heterosexual marriage) and what choices are not (e.g. homosexual marriage, serial monogamy facilitated by divorce, polygamy, polyamory). These prescriptions can be helpful for folks, for reasons that I will get to in a moment, but as a result of my personal experience, I am hesitant to recommend any one of them to the entire human race as the only prescription for happiness. To me, it seems that human happiness, generally speaking, is incoherent: different people have different ideas about happiness, such that there is no one way of life (or marriage) that guarantees it generally (for all that many different ways work with more or less success for larger or smaller groups of people: I would be miserable in a homosexual marriage, but a homosexual person wouldn't; the fact that there are more people like me and less like the homosexual does not mean that his experience is somehow "wrong" or invalid, or that he should not have the opportunity to marry his way, in my view).
Given this laissez-faire attitude toward human morality on my part, many friends wonder where my personal moral stability comes from. How do I avoid giving in to the temptation to drop whatever I may have now and pursue more attractive options elsewhere? Why don't I drop my allegiance to my wife the same way I dropped my allegiance to LDS church leaders? (The short answer is that I have yet to catch her lying to me brazenly about matters of vital interest to me, but that is really just incidental. There is a serious question here, one that deserves more than a glib answer, however en pointe.)
Confronting the collapse of my faith in men whose character supplied my (legitimate) need for moral authority as teenager was rather frightening. As a kid, I made some moral choices because God (in the form of prophets ancient or modern) told me to, and that was the ultimate answer to all questions (the decision beyond which there was no appeal). History shows that this kind of thinking has deep roots, with oaths before God featuring among the earliest binding contracts known to (civilized) man. What happens when the God guaranteeing all these oaths is revealed to be a rhetorical fiction, a puppet played from the inside by some old duffers who wear the mantle of divinity with a good deal of humanity? What happens when you realize that there is no man in the sky watching every move you make? (Or as Plato would have Socrates ask in the Republic: what happens when you wear the ring of Gyges, a ring that makes you utterly invisible, allowing you to do anything you please without normal untoward consequences?) In the narrative I grew up with, this event was a terrible disaster: without God as the real ground for morality, human life becomes "evil" animal hedonism. (Remember the scripture in Mosiah 3:7, where "the natural man is an enemy to God, and is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." The good man must give himself up to the absolute moral authority of God or lose his goodness.) My own descent into hedonism has not (yet) borne this narrative out, but I am constantly confronting it (in the assumptions religious believers make about me when I am indifferent toward theism, and/or in the stories I hear of and see in the lives of people around me who do value things differently as atheists than they did as religious believers). In concrete terms, people wonder why I don't leave my wife (for example) or (at least) treat my relationship with her as casually as I do my relationship with (say) the LDS church. Where does my moral foundation lie? Why are promises sacred? Are there any points at which a promise becomes non-binding, for me? Where are those points?
It is fitting that I should answer these questions with a disquisition on pleasure, since pleasure and pain are really the heart of what they inquire about (how much pleasure are you willing to pass up to keep a promise? how much pain will you endure before breaking a promise?). Here it is very useful to bring up the Buddhist teaching (confirmed by my personal experience) that pleasure and pain are really the same thing, a fleeting impression on the human psyche that brings mixed consequences (causing us to notice factors in our environment differently, with the result that we alter our behavior in a way loosely calculated to improve the chance that our genes survive, to add a modern biological garnish to the ancient dictum). If I know that pleasure is pain, then I instinctively recoil from it at least as much as I spring toward it. I love it and court it, as I must, but I also aim to keep it at a safe distance. Rather than embrace it uncritically, drinking deep every time nature (or God or whatever is pulling the strings that make the universe dance) proffers the cup, I hang back, stealing in for a drink only when I think it is safe (judging from my own and others' experiences, in that order: my experience of myself trumps what other people tell me about themselves). How does this kind of thinking look in real life? How do I use it in real situations? Let's see.
(1) How much pleasure am I willing to pass up to keep a promise? Big pleasures come with big consequences. Intimate relationships require time and commitment to work in a way that is sustainable and stable (as I like my pleasures to be). When I enter into an intimate relationship with someone, a really pleasurable (and pleasant) relationship like marriage, I invest in that person. I spend time with that person. I talk to that person. I think with that person. I let that person shop for me, work for me, sign for me, even think for me (in situations where that is required). Why would I throw that investment away merely because somebody else walks by one day with a cute rear-end (or whatever)? That would not make sense. It would not even be pleasurable (from my perspective: the pleasure of chasing a new romantic interest pales in comparison with the pain of losing my wife, to whom I have already devoted so much time and interest).
In my mind, the paradox of choice means that modern life is uniquely cruel to people who obsess over making the right choices (thinking that they have to find the right brand of shoes among 500, or the perfect wife or romantic partner among the population of co-eds at the local university or church or wherever). Much of the time, the criteria we come up with to facilitate choice in situations of super-abundance are worse than useless. We become obsessed with noise and ignore the really important information (the information that is actually relevant to our personal sense of pleasure). Instead of taking five minutes to decide what shoes we need, going to the store, and buying those shoes, we walk into the store undecided, try on 30 pairs, buy 5, and then go home to wonder over and over again whether we should trade some of them in and/or buy some of the ones we rejected. Instead of pursuing with gusto the romantic adventures that life thrusts upon us, we move obsessively from one partner to another, chasing our illusions of "the perfect mate" from one "failed" relationship to the next (and so on until we become Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Newt Gingrich, or Rush Limbaugh: these are not terrible men, but I would not want to marry them--in some bizarre world where I am a heterosexual woman). In marriage, from my perspective, the noise is other people (who seem better than your spouse when you don’t know them as well). The information that really matters is how your spouse is (am I abused? am I abusive? is there something that I really need that I cannot get, something that my spouse really needs that I cannot give?). If my marriage became impossibly bland--empty, passionless, etc.--then I would consider ending it (as much for my wife's good/pleasure as for mine: why should she be trapped in a relationship that is merely a shell of what it should be, what it once was?). But I would never end my marriage on a whim (merely because a lady with nice parts flirted with me). That would be decidedly unpleasant (I think).
There is something really profound lurking here, a truth that is applicable all along the depth and breadth of human experience (my own and that of other people too, as near as I can tell). Democritus expressed this truth by saying that “the sweetest pleasures are the rarest.” While the extreme version of this is untrue, there is something solid to the idea of limiting one’s exposure to certain pleasures more than one might instinctively want to. Take fasting for example. I stopped eating three square meals a day, and suddenly maintaining a healthy weight became effortless (calorie-restriction does still work, but it feels so much easier when instead of eating three small meals every day, I get to eat one or two huge ones). Consider sex. Every now and then, my wife and I are separated for environmental reasons (she has a period, I am sick, the kids are obnoxious), and whenever this happens, our next amorous encounter registers off the charts (not that we have a bad sex life meantime, but the difference between sated-sex and famine-sex is amazing). Work is the same. I get more done, I am more creative in the office, and my physical work-outs are much more productive, when I make the effort to stay away and avoid “punching the clock” just to convince myself that I am doing something. I think these empirical realities (in my life) are important, since they represent a reality that many modern men overlook entirely (coming from a background that takes scarcity for granted and works to cultivate abundance, which was foreign and desirable to my grandfathers as it is not to me).
This leads me to an interesting dichotomy between my ideas of (i) general human happiness and (ii) particular human happiness. (i) Generally speaking, I think human happiness is better served when there are many options available for people to try. Marry a woman (or several). Marry a man. Marry your dog. The market should be as free as possible. (ii) Speaking particularly, however, I think happiness is all about eliminating options. People generally should be maximally free to pursue their own happiness; that said, pursuing one's own happiness requires cultivating one's own garden without being too concerned about anybody else's. Pick the method(s) that work for you, and ignore everything else. When I examine my personal morality carefully, I am all about taking away my own choices. In a culture defined by glut, I deliberately cultivate famine (spending hours without food, days without sex, and as much time as possible not working). I do this because I find that constant glut (which my environment recommends reflexively) is not pleasant: who wants to binge all the time on endless food, sex, or work? Not me. Confronting my morality with complete honesty (as I wear the ring of Gyges) has taught me this lesson about myself.
I see the paradox of choice, and I think it is part of human nature. As with other aspects of human nature, it is better dealt with than ignored. (To ignore it is to invite it to find you unprepared, leading you to make decisions that you are likely to regret later, with the benefit of hindsight. Personally, I like to know my enemies, including the one who dwells between my ears, and keep them close when I cannot avoid them entirely.)
To make a choice is necessarily to make oneself vulnerable (to disillusionment, disappointment, unexpected consequences, etc.), especially when the choice involves something truly momentous (as the choice to get married undoubtedly does). But not choosing is also weak, since choices are a necessary part of life (much as intimacy is: as bad as a bad marriage is, no marriage at all might be just as bad). How do we allow choice without letting it take us places where we do not want to go? Historically, people create narratives that allow them to "have their cake and eat it too" -- narratives that promise future choices (maybe an eternity of them) in return for making a limiting choice here and now. Oftentimes, these narratives seek to be prescriptive, telling people what choices are acceptable (e.g. monogamous heterosexual marriage) and what choices are not (e.g. homosexual marriage, serial monogamy facilitated by divorce, polygamy, polyamory). These prescriptions can be helpful for folks, for reasons that I will get to in a moment, but as a result of my personal experience, I am hesitant to recommend any one of them to the entire human race as the only prescription for happiness. To me, it seems that human happiness, generally speaking, is incoherent: different people have different ideas about happiness, such that there is no one way of life (or marriage) that guarantees it generally (for all that many different ways work with more or less success for larger or smaller groups of people: I would be miserable in a homosexual marriage, but a homosexual person wouldn't; the fact that there are more people like me and less like the homosexual does not mean that his experience is somehow "wrong" or invalid, or that he should not have the opportunity to marry his way, in my view).
Given this laissez-faire attitude toward human morality on my part, many friends wonder where my personal moral stability comes from. How do I avoid giving in to the temptation to drop whatever I may have now and pursue more attractive options elsewhere? Why don't I drop my allegiance to my wife the same way I dropped my allegiance to LDS church leaders? (The short answer is that I have yet to catch her lying to me brazenly about matters of vital interest to me, but that is really just incidental. There is a serious question here, one that deserves more than a glib answer, however en pointe.)
Confronting the collapse of my faith in men whose character supplied my (legitimate) need for moral authority as teenager was rather frightening. As a kid, I made some moral choices because God (in the form of prophets ancient or modern) told me to, and that was the ultimate answer to all questions (the decision beyond which there was no appeal). History shows that this kind of thinking has deep roots, with oaths before God featuring among the earliest binding contracts known to (civilized) man. What happens when the God guaranteeing all these oaths is revealed to be a rhetorical fiction, a puppet played from the inside by some old duffers who wear the mantle of divinity with a good deal of humanity? What happens when you realize that there is no man in the sky watching every move you make? (Or as Plato would have Socrates ask in the Republic: what happens when you wear the ring of Gyges, a ring that makes you utterly invisible, allowing you to do anything you please without normal untoward consequences?) In the narrative I grew up with, this event was a terrible disaster: without God as the real ground for morality, human life becomes "evil" animal hedonism. (Remember the scripture in Mosiah 3:7, where "the natural man is an enemy to God, and is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." The good man must give himself up to the absolute moral authority of God or lose his goodness.) My own descent into hedonism has not (yet) borne this narrative out, but I am constantly confronting it (in the assumptions religious believers make about me when I am indifferent toward theism, and/or in the stories I hear of and see in the lives of people around me who do value things differently as atheists than they did as religious believers). In concrete terms, people wonder why I don't leave my wife (for example) or (at least) treat my relationship with her as casually as I do my relationship with (say) the LDS church. Where does my moral foundation lie? Why are promises sacred? Are there any points at which a promise becomes non-binding, for me? Where are those points?
It is fitting that I should answer these questions with a disquisition on pleasure, since pleasure and pain are really the heart of what they inquire about (how much pleasure are you willing to pass up to keep a promise? how much pain will you endure before breaking a promise?). Here it is very useful to bring up the Buddhist teaching (confirmed by my personal experience) that pleasure and pain are really the same thing, a fleeting impression on the human psyche that brings mixed consequences (causing us to notice factors in our environment differently, with the result that we alter our behavior in a way loosely calculated to improve the chance that our genes survive, to add a modern biological garnish to the ancient dictum). If I know that pleasure is pain, then I instinctively recoil from it at least as much as I spring toward it. I love it and court it, as I must, but I also aim to keep it at a safe distance. Rather than embrace it uncritically, drinking deep every time nature (or God or whatever is pulling the strings that make the universe dance) proffers the cup, I hang back, stealing in for a drink only when I think it is safe (judging from my own and others' experiences, in that order: my experience of myself trumps what other people tell me about themselves). How does this kind of thinking look in real life? How do I use it in real situations? Let's see.
(1) How much pleasure am I willing to pass up to keep a promise? Big pleasures come with big consequences. Intimate relationships require time and commitment to work in a way that is sustainable and stable (as I like my pleasures to be). When I enter into an intimate relationship with someone, a really pleasurable (and pleasant) relationship like marriage, I invest in that person. I spend time with that person. I talk to that person. I think with that person. I let that person shop for me, work for me, sign for me, even think for me (in situations where that is required). Why would I throw that investment away merely because somebody else walks by one day with a cute rear-end (or whatever)? That would not make sense. It would not even be pleasurable (from my perspective: the pleasure of chasing a new romantic interest pales in comparison with the pain of losing my wife, to whom I have already devoted so much time and interest).
In my mind, the paradox of choice means that modern life is uniquely cruel to people who obsess over making the right choices (thinking that they have to find the right brand of shoes among 500, or the perfect wife or romantic partner among the population of co-eds at the local university or church or wherever). Much of the time, the criteria we come up with to facilitate choice in situations of super-abundance are worse than useless. We become obsessed with noise and ignore the really important information (the information that is actually relevant to our personal sense of pleasure). Instead of taking five minutes to decide what shoes we need, going to the store, and buying those shoes, we walk into the store undecided, try on 30 pairs, buy 5, and then go home to wonder over and over again whether we should trade some of them in and/or buy some of the ones we rejected. Instead of pursuing with gusto the romantic adventures that life thrusts upon us, we move obsessively from one partner to another, chasing our illusions of "the perfect mate" from one "failed" relationship to the next (and so on until we become Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Newt Gingrich, or Rush Limbaugh: these are not terrible men, but I would not want to marry them--in some bizarre world where I am a heterosexual woman). In marriage, from my perspective, the noise is other people (who seem better than your spouse when you don’t know them as well). The information that really matters is how your spouse is (am I abused? am I abusive? is there something that I really need that I cannot get, something that my spouse really needs that I cannot give?). If my marriage became impossibly bland--empty, passionless, etc.--then I would consider ending it (as much for my wife's good/pleasure as for mine: why should she be trapped in a relationship that is merely a shell of what it should be, what it once was?). But I would never end my marriage on a whim (merely because a lady with nice parts flirted with me). That would be decidedly unpleasant (I think).
There is something really profound lurking here, a truth that is applicable all along the depth and breadth of human experience (my own and that of other people too, as near as I can tell). Democritus expressed this truth by saying that “the sweetest pleasures are the rarest.” While the extreme version of this is untrue, there is something solid to the idea of limiting one’s exposure to certain pleasures more than one might instinctively want to. Take fasting for example. I stopped eating three square meals a day, and suddenly maintaining a healthy weight became effortless (calorie-restriction does still work, but it feels so much easier when instead of eating three small meals every day, I get to eat one or two huge ones). Consider sex. Every now and then, my wife and I are separated for environmental reasons (she has a period, I am sick, the kids are obnoxious), and whenever this happens, our next amorous encounter registers off the charts (not that we have a bad sex life meantime, but the difference between sated-sex and famine-sex is amazing). Work is the same. I get more done, I am more creative in the office, and my physical work-outs are much more productive, when I make the effort to stay away and avoid “punching the clock” just to convince myself that I am doing something. I think these empirical realities (in my life) are important, since they represent a reality that many modern men overlook entirely (coming from a background that takes scarcity for granted and works to cultivate abundance, which was foreign and desirable to my grandfathers as it is not to me).
This leads me to an interesting dichotomy between my ideas of (i) general human happiness and (ii) particular human happiness. (i) Generally speaking, I think human happiness is better served when there are many options available for people to try. Marry a woman (or several). Marry a man. Marry your dog. The market should be as free as possible. (ii) Speaking particularly, however, I think happiness is all about eliminating options. People generally should be maximally free to pursue their own happiness; that said, pursuing one's own happiness requires cultivating one's own garden without being too concerned about anybody else's. Pick the method(s) that work for you, and ignore everything else. When I examine my personal morality carefully, I am all about taking away my own choices. In a culture defined by glut, I deliberately cultivate famine (spending hours without food, days without sex, and as much time as possible not working). I do this because I find that constant glut (which my environment recommends reflexively) is not pleasant: who wants to binge all the time on endless food, sex, or work? Not me. Confronting my morality with complete honesty (as I wear the ring of Gyges) has taught me this lesson about myself.
(2) How much pain will I endure before breaking a promise? Periodically, people talk about certain emotions being unlimited, invoking words like "divine love" or "compassion" or "grace" to point to the idea that the universe always gives you another chance (even if that comes only in another life). While I see some utility in this idea, I confess I am not really convinced. If you rape me, I might forgive you, but I am never going to put myself deliberately in your company again. I am not going to make myself vulnerable (no matter what some god says). Our relationship is (for this life at least) permanently altered. If you lie to me about things that are vitally important to me, then I am never going to trust you with my dearest secrets. Not because I don't love you. Not because I don't believe that you might still have some good qualities. Not because I think you should die horribly in some tragic accident. I just don't have the stomach for making myself deliberately vulnerable to somebody I have good reason not to trust. I don't set myself up to fail. If a relationship is not working, then I think the understanding on which that relationship exists needs to be re-examined, and it may end up needing to change. That is acceptable. Change happens.
My wife has discussed behavior that might lead her to end our relationship. If I were abusive or sexually promiscuous (chasing skirts like better men before me), then she would step out of the marriage without any guilt. I think this is wise. Cultivating a good marriage is the right thing to do (because it is most pleasant, in my experience), and ditching a bad marriage is the right thing to do (because it is most unpleasant, in my vicarious experience). The reality that the healthiness of my relationships depends on constant care becomes very obvious in this paradigm, which will not let me off the hook with the specious plea: "Well, you signed up for this crap when you took me at the altar, so take it--the good along with the bad!" Instead of settling down to this sort of complacency, I am expected to court my wife every day, reminding her that I am really a pleasant person to have around. She could end our involvement at any moment, and my awareness of that fact keeps me from taking her utterly for granted.
In summary, I have found that hedonism is not altogether dehumanizing (in the bad sense). Now that I look back, it seems to me that I was always a hedonist, even when I was religious. The difference between me as I am and me as I was is that I now understand my relationship to pleasure much better. I see how I react to pleasure, how I value it, and I have learned to minimize the sorts of behavior associated with it that tend to bring unpleasant consequences (as I perceive them: others are welcome to decide differently, provided that they do not dictate to me unilaterally from their experience just as I would never presume to dictate to them). This does not mean that I value pleasure perfectly now, that I never make mistakes, but I do like to think (and it seems true) that I learn better from my mistakes now than I did five years ago. One benefit that comes from partaking of the forbidden fruit is that you really do become wise.
My wife has discussed behavior that might lead her to end our relationship. If I were abusive or sexually promiscuous (chasing skirts like better men before me), then she would step out of the marriage without any guilt. I think this is wise. Cultivating a good marriage is the right thing to do (because it is most pleasant, in my experience), and ditching a bad marriage is the right thing to do (because it is most unpleasant, in my vicarious experience). The reality that the healthiness of my relationships depends on constant care becomes very obvious in this paradigm, which will not let me off the hook with the specious plea: "Well, you signed up for this crap when you took me at the altar, so take it--the good along with the bad!" Instead of settling down to this sort of complacency, I am expected to court my wife every day, reminding her that I am really a pleasant person to have around. She could end our involvement at any moment, and my awareness of that fact keeps me from taking her utterly for granted.
In summary, I have found that hedonism is not altogether dehumanizing (in the bad sense). Now that I look back, it seems to me that I was always a hedonist, even when I was religious. The difference between me as I am and me as I was is that I now understand my relationship to pleasure much better. I see how I react to pleasure, how I value it, and I have learned to minimize the sorts of behavior associated with it that tend to bring unpleasant consequences (as I perceive them: others are welcome to decide differently, provided that they do not dictate to me unilaterally from their experience just as I would never presume to dictate to them). This does not mean that I value pleasure perfectly now, that I never make mistakes, but I do like to think (and it seems true) that I learn better from my mistakes now than I did five years ago. One benefit that comes from partaking of the forbidden fruit is that you really do become wise.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Wise Words about Human Ethics
Here are some excellent reflections on morality (specifically sexuality, but as the author points out, sex is not really special).
Friday, August 31, 2012
Funny Business
These thoughts occurred to me as I interacted with some people arguing that the solution to current economic woes is government intervention (1) to regulate fraud out of existence, (2) to create more jobs (e.g. "build more infrastructure"), and (3) to fix income disparity (e.g. with a "minimum guaranteed income").
(1) People are always going to be initiating fraud and/or making bad business decisions. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop when they get elected, take an oath, and enter public service. The fundamental problem with more government oversight as the solution to fraud or bad business decisions is that government workers are just people too (whether fraudsters or simply well-meaning fools). Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Because of the revolving door that Sorkin writes about (connecting the world of big business to the world of big government), the same bureaucrats (the Henry Paulsens, Tim Geithners, and Ben Bernankes) are always running the show, whether they happen to draw a paycheck from private profiteering or public service at any given moment in time.
The recent American housing crisis provides a useful illustration of this. Proponents of more government regulation as a solution to our financial difficulties tell us that the crisis was caused by evil banks using dishonest tricks to make excessive profits. There is definitely some truth to this explanation, but it misses an important detail: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were creations of the federal government, which demanded from them a policy like the one that they adopted (to our ruin) -- a policy that would allow and even encourage people to buy houses (give it up for the American dream!) regardless of their (in)ability to pay. Now, would-be government saviors want us to forget their role in causing the mess (which they are blaming on private industry, conveniently overlooking that the private industry was just doing what they told it to). This classic dodge is the same trick the LDS church uses to avoid being responsible for any of the uncomfortable things its prophets do or say. Apologists for the Fed argue in effect that the recent financial crisis reveals our federal overseers speaking as fallible men (when they adopt policies that history reveals to be idiotic), but that we must all nevertheless continue to follow them unswervingly as though they were infallible prophets. This naked appeal to authority without responsibility leaves me profoundly unconvinced.
The problem of government irresponsibility is a tough one. Unfortunately, the existence of the Federal Reserve (as presently constituted) means that much of the government's (immense) economic power is entrusted to the jurisdiction of people who owe me (personally) even less than the periodically elected clowns-in-chief who answer to me as one person among 300 million (which in practical terms means that they couldn't care less what I have to say until I have at least a million friends: good luck getting a million people to agree on something that isn't hopelessly incoherent and/or stupid). If Barack Obama doesn't really mind what I think about my money (any more than George Bush did), Ben Bernanke couldn't care less: he is not responsible to me at all, in any way, shape, or form. I resent it when his decisions (to inflate the currency, to bail out businesses that I see as bad for society) control my purse more effectively than I do. I don't make much money. I am not very important to society. But that doesn't mean that I don't have desires, that I don't believe in causes, that I don't want my two cents going to good things (things that I approve) rather than bad things (things I disapprove). I resent it when the meager surplus that I have worked hard for and would like to invest in small businesses in Africa (or whatever) gets siphoned off by Ben Bernanke to keep Bear Stearns or GM alive. And there is very little I can do about it except rant on the Internet. (At least we have that!) When people come to me arguing that people like me should be in favor of more government regulation, that it would actually solve all the problems I experience, I'm not sure how to take it: "Just give the hangman a little more rope! A few more inches and it'll all be over." Yeah, right.
(2) Now for those folks who think we could solve all problems by hiring people indefinitely to just "build infrastructure." The need for infrastructure is finite, as is the material basis for infrastructure in geographical space and physical raw materials. We don't have room or materials for endless roads (to nowhere), endless schools (to house imaginary students), endless buildings (to be occupied by corporations that don't exist, serving needs for which there is no market). The fallacy that we can just grow our way out of fundamental weaknesses in our economic system is an enduring one. It shows up throughout history (as Marx's theory of value to give one notable example: unfortunately, the fact that I spend hours laboring over something does not mean that it automatically has value that someone else must recognize). In the past, back when there were still acres of untapped wilderness waiting to be exploited, it made more sense: if you can't make it in the city, move to the country (the rainforest, the mountains, the jungle, the bush, whatever, and become a settler "building infrastructure"). But today, in a global economy where every nook and cranny of the world is being explored and exploited (more or less), it is patently absurd (especially when we add the expectation that settlers in the bush live with the ephemeral comforts and luxuries of civilization as though these were some sort of human right).
In this day and age, "building infrastructure" often means destroying valuable resources to make a quick buck. One illustrative example would be Brazil cutting down rainforests to make fancy furniture and biofuels: the model of eternal economic growth pushes Brazil to exploit the forest (and destroy it) rather than leave it alone (and let it be a source of values and utility that cannot be turned into GDP to fund the entitled lifestyle expected by civilization). Civilization labors under an historical naivete which assumes that all economic problems can be solved with increased production and consumption: it does not know the meaning of austerity; its vision of wealth is fundamentally skewed toward growth and waste as necessary, even good, things. They are not.
(3) The problem with guaranteeing everyone a fixed income is that value in society (like value everywhere) is relative. Prices fluctuate. More money in more hands means that everything costs more. Dictators have been fighting this reality for a long time (a famous antique example would be Diocletian's Edict on Prices, which failed as every attempt before and after it that I am aware of has failed). Inflation is not a viable solution to ebbing liquidity, and increasing production is only a viable solution as long as we retain materials and space to exploit: when we tap out those resources, the Tooth Fairy does not come by to bless us with prosperity (even if we have PhDs in economics, which mean about as much to me as PhDs in astrology or voodoo, to be honest: Long-Term Capital Management was founded by bona fide, certified experts in the field).
Given the reality of our situation, it just seems wrong to me that Ben Bernanke retains the right to co-opt me as some kind of human resource. I don't mind recognizing real risks in the world and collaborating with others to meet those risks (as best we can: some of them are inevitably going to rock us, with unpleasant results; c'est la vie). But to me, collaboration means that I get a meaningful say in what my contribution is. I pick where my two cents go. I place my bets and let nature do her worst. I hate it when "doing my bit for society" means giving up all (or most) of my agency to the Ben Bernankes of the world, renouncing my role as a decision-maker so that some bureaucrat in authority can use my money to bail out his friends (Bear Stearns, GM) while my friends get rail-roaded. I admit that my own knowledge of economics is limited and imperfect. I admit that I make bad decisions, but I cannot say that the bureaucrats appear any more capable. Try as I have to catch them saving the world (as they always claim to be doing), all I ever see when I pull back the curtain is them using me as human capital to save their own fat ***es. Punks.
(1) People are always going to be initiating fraud and/or making bad business decisions. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop when they get elected, take an oath, and enter public service. The fundamental problem with more government oversight as the solution to fraud or bad business decisions is that government workers are just people too (whether fraudsters or simply well-meaning fools). Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Because of the revolving door that Sorkin writes about (connecting the world of big business to the world of big government), the same bureaucrats (the Henry Paulsens, Tim Geithners, and Ben Bernankes) are always running the show, whether they happen to draw a paycheck from private profiteering or public service at any given moment in time.
The recent American housing crisis provides a useful illustration of this. Proponents of more government regulation as a solution to our financial difficulties tell us that the crisis was caused by evil banks using dishonest tricks to make excessive profits. There is definitely some truth to this explanation, but it misses an important detail: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were creations of the federal government, which demanded from them a policy like the one that they adopted (to our ruin) -- a policy that would allow and even encourage people to buy houses (give it up for the American dream!) regardless of their (in)ability to pay. Now, would-be government saviors want us to forget their role in causing the mess (which they are blaming on private industry, conveniently overlooking that the private industry was just doing what they told it to). This classic dodge is the same trick the LDS church uses to avoid being responsible for any of the uncomfortable things its prophets do or say. Apologists for the Fed argue in effect that the recent financial crisis reveals our federal overseers speaking as fallible men (when they adopt policies that history reveals to be idiotic), but that we must all nevertheless continue to follow them unswervingly as though they were infallible prophets. This naked appeal to authority without responsibility leaves me profoundly unconvinced.
The problem of government irresponsibility is a tough one. Unfortunately, the existence of the Federal Reserve (as presently constituted) means that much of the government's (immense) economic power is entrusted to the jurisdiction of people who owe me (personally) even less than the periodically elected clowns-in-chief who answer to me as one person among 300 million (which in practical terms means that they couldn't care less what I have to say until I have at least a million friends: good luck getting a million people to agree on something that isn't hopelessly incoherent and/or stupid). If Barack Obama doesn't really mind what I think about my money (any more than George Bush did), Ben Bernanke couldn't care less: he is not responsible to me at all, in any way, shape, or form. I resent it when his decisions (to inflate the currency, to bail out businesses that I see as bad for society) control my purse more effectively than I do. I don't make much money. I am not very important to society. But that doesn't mean that I don't have desires, that I don't believe in causes, that I don't want my two cents going to good things (things that I approve) rather than bad things (things I disapprove). I resent it when the meager surplus that I have worked hard for and would like to invest in small businesses in Africa (or whatever) gets siphoned off by Ben Bernanke to keep Bear Stearns or GM alive. And there is very little I can do about it except rant on the Internet. (At least we have that!) When people come to me arguing that people like me should be in favor of more government regulation, that it would actually solve all the problems I experience, I'm not sure how to take it: "Just give the hangman a little more rope! A few more inches and it'll all be over." Yeah, right.
(2) Now for those folks who think we could solve all problems by hiring people indefinitely to just "build infrastructure." The need for infrastructure is finite, as is the material basis for infrastructure in geographical space and physical raw materials. We don't have room or materials for endless roads (to nowhere), endless schools (to house imaginary students), endless buildings (to be occupied by corporations that don't exist, serving needs for which there is no market). The fallacy that we can just grow our way out of fundamental weaknesses in our economic system is an enduring one. It shows up throughout history (as Marx's theory of value to give one notable example: unfortunately, the fact that I spend hours laboring over something does not mean that it automatically has value that someone else must recognize). In the past, back when there were still acres of untapped wilderness waiting to be exploited, it made more sense: if you can't make it in the city, move to the country (the rainforest, the mountains, the jungle, the bush, whatever, and become a settler "building infrastructure"). But today, in a global economy where every nook and cranny of the world is being explored and exploited (more or less), it is patently absurd (especially when we add the expectation that settlers in the bush live with the ephemeral comforts and luxuries of civilization as though these were some sort of human right).
In this day and age, "building infrastructure" often means destroying valuable resources to make a quick buck. One illustrative example would be Brazil cutting down rainforests to make fancy furniture and biofuels: the model of eternal economic growth pushes Brazil to exploit the forest (and destroy it) rather than leave it alone (and let it be a source of values and utility that cannot be turned into GDP to fund the entitled lifestyle expected by civilization). Civilization labors under an historical naivete which assumes that all economic problems can be solved with increased production and consumption: it does not know the meaning of austerity; its vision of wealth is fundamentally skewed toward growth and waste as necessary, even good, things. They are not.
(3) The problem with guaranteeing everyone a fixed income is that value in society (like value everywhere) is relative. Prices fluctuate. More money in more hands means that everything costs more. Dictators have been fighting this reality for a long time (a famous antique example would be Diocletian's Edict on Prices, which failed as every attempt before and after it that I am aware of has failed). Inflation is not a viable solution to ebbing liquidity, and increasing production is only a viable solution as long as we retain materials and space to exploit: when we tap out those resources, the Tooth Fairy does not come by to bless us with prosperity (even if we have PhDs in economics, which mean about as much to me as PhDs in astrology or voodoo, to be honest: Long-Term Capital Management was founded by bona fide, certified experts in the field).
Given the reality of our situation, it just seems wrong to me that Ben Bernanke retains the right to co-opt me as some kind of human resource. I don't mind recognizing real risks in the world and collaborating with others to meet those risks (as best we can: some of them are inevitably going to rock us, with unpleasant results; c'est la vie). But to me, collaboration means that I get a meaningful say in what my contribution is. I pick where my two cents go. I place my bets and let nature do her worst. I hate it when "doing my bit for society" means giving up all (or most) of my agency to the Ben Bernankes of the world, renouncing my role as a decision-maker so that some bureaucrat in authority can use my money to bail out his friends (Bear Stearns, GM) while my friends get rail-roaded. I admit that my own knowledge of economics is limited and imperfect. I admit that I make bad decisions, but I cannot say that the bureaucrats appear any more capable. Try as I have to catch them saving the world (as they always claim to be doing), all I ever see when I pull back the curtain is them using me as human capital to save their own fat ***es. Punks.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Heroic Resignation: Making Peace with Uncertainty and Suffering
Win Blevins. Stone Song: A Novel About the Life of Crazy Horse. New York: Forge, 1995. ISBN: 0812533690.
One last quote from this novel (from page 366):
Inasmuch as my journey to this realization has come through being "betrayed" by others and by my own unrealistic expectations over the years, I am actually grateful -- yes, grateful -- to have been betrayed. The closest I can come to forgiving others (especially church leaders) and myself is to reflect that our foolish actions have had at least one happy accident: I understand life better because of them. The bitter has taught me to prize the sweet. I don't know how it could be any other way: to avoid one path of bitterness is really just to fall into another one. As bitter paths go, modern Mormonism seems like a really nice one (better than many!). So I don't regret being a Mormon. There are still many things in Mormonism that I like. I don't want to erase my past, any more than I wish to get out of my present: I cannot imagine living without either.
As painful and as real as my soul-wounds are sometimes, they are not utterly awful. As the Buddha recognized, all emotion is suffering. You cannot have pleasure without pain, and every pain comes tinged with some kind of pleasure -- a palliative to help us bear what we must in order to survive. I see this and accept it.
One last quote from this novel (from page 366):
Crazy Horse shrugged. Yes, yes, there was white fire coming at him, and the hands of his own people were grabbing at him from behind, and he might be hurt. He felt the rightness of it. He wanted to survive, but maybe he wouldn't. He would ride and feel the rightness under him like a fine, spirited pony.Life is uncertain. I am weak. I cannot prepare against all contingencies. I cannot answer all questions or solve all problems (in my own life, let alone the lives of other people). But I can meet them with dignity. Win or lose, I can strike a heroic pose. I can do my best work, and the result be whatever it is going to be. I can tell the truth as I see it, and let the cards fall. That is all I ask of the world, because that is really all it is able to give me.
Inasmuch as my journey to this realization has come through being "betrayed" by others and by my own unrealistic expectations over the years, I am actually grateful -- yes, grateful -- to have been betrayed. The closest I can come to forgiving others (especially church leaders) and myself is to reflect that our foolish actions have had at least one happy accident: I understand life better because of them. The bitter has taught me to prize the sweet. I don't know how it could be any other way: to avoid one path of bitterness is really just to fall into another one. As bitter paths go, modern Mormonism seems like a really nice one (better than many!). So I don't regret being a Mormon. There are still many things in Mormonism that I like. I don't want to erase my past, any more than I wish to get out of my present: I cannot imagine living without either.
As painful and as real as my soul-wounds are sometimes, they are not utterly awful. As the Buddha recognized, all emotion is suffering. You cannot have pleasure without pain, and every pain comes tinged with some kind of pleasure -- a palliative to help us bear what we must in order to survive. I see this and accept it.
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