Family of Values: Humanity

Sometimes it seems there is nothing one can do but weep. Or hope

One of the most brilliant men who ever lived, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), once wrote (in Latin, of course):

"Now this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite, cannot but have chosen the best. For as a lesser evil is a kind of good, even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way of a greater good; and there would be something to correct in the actions of God if it were possible to do better. As in mathematics, when there is no maximum nor minimum, in short nothing distinguished, everything is done equally, or when that is not possible nothing at all is done: so it may be said likewise in respect of perfect wisdom, which is no less orderly than mathematics, that if there were not the best (optimum) among all possible worlds, God would not have produced any. I call 'World' the whole succession and the whole agglomeration of all existent things, lest it be said that several worlds could have existed in different times and different places. For they must needs be reckoned all together as one world or, if you will, as one Universe. And even though one should fill all times and all places, it still remains true that one might have filled them in innumerable ways, and that there is an infinitude of possible worlds among which God must needs have chosen the best, since he does nothing without acting in accordance with supreme reason." Theodicy

A 'theodicy' is a treatise on the goodness of god (or providence or fate) in the face of evil in the world. Leibniz believed that three spatial dimensions plus one of space/time made for the best of possible worlds for the flourishing of human life and moral goodness.

Some years later, another brilliant man, Voltaire, upon witnessing the utter destruction of Lisbon, Portugal by an earthquake and tsunami on November 1, 1755 (All Saints' Day), wrote a deeply humane poem and a satiric novel about the impact of the disaster on the Panglossian optimism expressed in the works of philosophers and theologians of the time such as Leibniz.

In the latter work, Candide, Dr. Pangloss the philosopher says of the earthquake's devastation: "'For all this,' said he, 'is a manifestation of the rightness of things, since if there is a volcano at Lisbon it could not be anywhere else. For it is impossible for things not to be where they are, because everything is for the best.'"

In the poem, Voltaire says:

"Will you say, "It is the effect of everlasting laws
Which necessitates this choice by a free and good God"?
Will you say, seeing this heap of victims:
"God is avenged, their death is the payment of their crimes"?
What crimes, what bad things have been committed by these
children,
Lying on the breasts of their mothers, flattened and bloody?
Lisbon, which is a city no longer, had it more vices
Than London, than Paris, given to doubtful delights?
...
If the eternal law which moves elemental things
Makes rocks fall, by the efforts of great winds,
If thickly growing oaks are burned by lightning—
They do not feel the blows which bring them down,
But I live; but I feel; but my heart, deeply hurt,
Asks for help from the God who made it exist.
...
What eye may see into his deep designs?
From a Being all perfect, evil cannot come to be.
It does not come from another, since God alone is master.
Yet, evil exists. O sad truths!
O astonishing mingling of contrarieties!
A God came to console our afflicted race;
He visited the earth, and has not changed it.
...
Whatever opinion one has, one should shudder, no doubt.
There is nothing one knows, and nothing one does not question.
Nature is mute, she is questioned in vain.
There is need of a God who talks to humanity.
It is for him only to explain his work,
To console the weak, make the wise person clear.
...
What can then do, the mind of largest range?
Nothing. The book of fate closes itself before our eyes.
Man, a stranger to himself, by man is not known.
What am I, where am I, where do I go, and from what do I come?
Atoms tormented on this mass of mud,
Whom death engulfs and with whom fate plays—
But thinking atoms, atoms whose eyes,
Guided by thought, have measured the skies.
From the very midst of the infinite, our lives go forth,
Without our being able, one moment, to see ourselves or know
ourselves.
...
A caliph once, at his last hour,
To the God whom he adored, said, for all prayer:
"I carry to you, O Only King, Only Unlimited Being,
All that which you don't have in your immensity—
Deficiencies, regrets, evils and ignorance."
But he might, also, have added: Hope.
...
What is needed, O mortals? Mortals, it is needed that we suffer,
Submit ourselves silently, adore, and die.
...
O God, give us a Revelation that we should be humane and
tolerant.

From Hail, American Development (Definition Press)
© 1968 by Eli Siegel

As Theodor Adorno wrote, "[t]he earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz" (Negative Dialectics 361).

Scholars debate whether Voltaire deliberately misinterpreted Leibniz's metaphysical point to make a humanitarian case. Notwithstanding, the Leibnizian view, at base, counsels passivity and optimism in the face of an ultimately benign reality (call it Fate, Providence, God—whatever) in which everything that happens is for the best ("God's will"); and even though this is a fallen world, it will be followed on by a better one in the hereafter.

-------------

January 12, 2010, saw an equally destructive earthquake strike Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As of this writing, the extent of the destruction is unknown. What is known is that it was devastating in the extreme: untold thousands have died and even more are injured; entire sections of the city are in rubble; hospitals have been flattened; there is no food, water, or electricity; sanitary conditions are only going to worsen.

It only makes sense at times like these to ask: why? The reality is that Port-au-Prince, a poor, populous city, sits right on top of an active fault line where the Caribbean plate and the North American plate collide. The underground friction as these two tectonic plates shift has been building up for nearly two centuries, and the unleashing of this pent-up force caused the ground under the city to shake. Population growth and unregulated or even absent building codes and urban planning has resulted in overcrowding. Extreme poverty has resulted in poor or even non-existent infrastructure. Accordingly, the city collapsed. Such things happen in this world. The causes are evident.

Is this evil?

No. The Leibnizian/Voltairean debate over whether such could have been the will of some distant creator god or tolerated by some god-who-is-with-us-in-spirit-only or the punitive action of a retributive deity or the work of some evil demon is arcane. Passe. It explains nothing, salves no wounds. However, it excuses heedlessness and cruelty—inhumanity: Why help them since God has seen fit to punish them, or because this was their fate?

[I will not link to the "utterly stupid" remarks of certain public figures—a rancid television preacher and a belching, radio fat-cat gas bag who have been America's first responders in this vein. If you read this blog, you know who they are.]

Natural events are not, in themselves, evil. They are a condition of the planet upon which we live. A fact of life on planet Earth. Inhumanity, insensitivity, cruelty, on the other hand: these are true evils.

No one deserves such a disastrous fate—not poor people, nor black people, nor former slaves, nor French-speaking people; not people whose homes happen to sit on a fault line, nor even folk who have been victimized and impoverished by a corrupt oligarchy and colonial/neo-colonial exploitation. No one. Not even folks whose ancestors might have made a "pact to the devil" (to quote the aforementioned American religionist whose views are truly evil).

Real human beings in Haiti are in desperate need of medical assistance and basic food and water and shelter and sanitation. And here's where we see the true good in humanity. Here is where there is hope for us all. Individuals, non-governmental organizations, churches, nations, even international bodies have mobilized unbelievably quickly to do what they can to help with the almost unimaginable suffering in Haiti. Bless them all. Thank them all. Contribute, if you can. Here. Or here. Or participate however and wherever your conscience leads. But contribute. It is a way we all can participate in this great work of true humanity, this moment of true goodness.

When one person suffers, we all suffer. Now, millions (literally millions) are suffering. It is going to take a massive, long-term humanitarian effort to make even a dent in it. Yet, it is happening before our eyes. Humanity, for a moment, is uniting to come to the aid of suffering humanity. Those who would exploit this calamity for their own profit or political or personal gain are the ones who bring evil into this world.

The real question is: why does it take an event of such enormity to bring out the good in us all (minus, of course, a few ignorant and insensitive, dare I say evil, louts)? Why isn't alleviating poverty and human suffering our abiding task?

O God, give us a Revelation that we should be humane and
tolerant.

Family of Values: Love

This is the second topic in my ongoing "Family of Values" series.



If you Google the word 'love', you retrieve "about 1,590,000,000" items. The concept or idea of love plays an absolutely central part in our culture and its self-definition. We use the word 'love' to express our affinity for many things, from our cars to our music, from our shoes to our neighborhood, from cherries to aloe tissue paper, from our country to our crown molding, from NY to Hello Kitty, from golf to opera, from our pets to our friends, from our parents to our spouses, from our children to ourselves. We speak about amour propre, amour fou, courtly love, romantic love. We talk about falling in love and loving Jesus. And I could go on and on.

Standard philosophical discussions of love tend to turn to the ancient Greek notions of eros, agape, and philia. If you want to refresh your memory, you can read about them here. These discussions try to make distinctions between sexual, amorous, romantic, platonic, and familial loves. They tend to treat love as an attitude, a feeling or emotion, a valuing. This is a shallow psychological conceptualization, it seems to me, a devaluing of something much more profound.

I think if you asked Tiger Woods if he loves his wife and children, he would probably say yes. After all, in marrying Elin, he publicly professed his undying love for her. After the revelations of the last couple weeks, I think it's also fair to say Tiger doesn't really know what love is. But then, given our polyamorous proclamations, neither do we.

Without getting into the religious aspects of it, I have written here on more than one occasion about my take on the Christian virtue of love as found in the Bible. The actions of the story's hero, Jesus from Nazareth, are a metaphor for love. He and his gang of ruffians trashed the biggest temple/market day of the year in Jerusalem, Passover. Apparently, he was upset about the hypocrisy of the organized religion of the day, and this was the way he led his men in protest. We don't quite know what damage they inflicted on the money-changers and sellers of sacrificial animals, etc., but we know it had to have been significant for the temple police called the Roman guards. They cornered Jesus and his gang in their nearby hideout, a park outside the city, and Jesus manned up and took the rap for all of them—a death sentence, it turns out. Ultimately, he gave up his life so his men could escape and live to tell the tale.

This is a profound definition of real love: giving up one's self for the best interests of one's friends. Stated succinctly: "There is no greater love than that a man should give up his own life for the sake of his friends." That point is stated outright in the Gospel of John 15:13. Theological scholars, i.e., the Jesus Seminar, do not necessarily believe this was an actual saying of Jesus primarily because it comes in a passage in which Jesus calls for loyalty to himself. Still, it encapsulates the theme of Jesus's life and death. For more on this topic, I refer you to my previous post here. And as a definition of true love, it stands the test of time.

The Christian conception of love takes it yet a step further. Giving up what one most prizes, say one's only child, for the sake of others is a love that is worthy of a divinity.

This is a high standard. Fine. It may be an unmeetable standard. Okay. But love is such a central concern of our culture, an absolutely core value, that any but an ideal standard is demeaning not just to love but to who we are as a culture.

What I am talking about here is more than a feeling or an attitude or a valuing. It is pure action, a way of living one's life, a way of acting.

Undoubtedly, at some point, Tiger 'fell in love' with Elin. Falling in love is a feeling, a gushy, gooey, falling all over myself, endorphin spurting kind of emotion. There's nothing to stop someone from falling in love with a different person every day as far as I can tell—or at every tour event. But that is not true love. True love may take its start from there (in the case of spouses and life-partners and such), but it is more than that; it grows, matures, deepens, transforms.

If, e.g., Tiger truly loved his wife and his family, he might choose to give up his selfish interests in bedding every cocktail waitress he meets on the road for their sake. Or not. It may be that Tiger is in love with, or even hooked on, falling in love. Who's to say? If falling in love is nothing more than an endorphin rush, it can certainly be addictive (just like running, e.g.).

So, what does this exalted concept of love have to do with what we mean when we use the word love in statements like 'I love my Jimmy Choo's' or 'I love pancakes' or I love my country' or 'I love my job' or 'I love The Big Lebowski' or 'I am falling in love with her' or 'Love makes me happy'? Are these different things or are they somehow connected by this vaunted concept of giving up oneself?

We can certainly postulate that, on our definition, to love something or someone is necessarily to give up something of one's self (a feeling, an attitude, a valuation [monetary or otherwise], etc.) and that there are degrees of such love. I believe that that is an iron-clad law, kind of like the law of gravity. But is that really meaningful?

We throw the word 'love' around casually, to the point it almost has no more meaning. I wonder if Tiger told any of his 'lovers' that he loved them? Is it possible he did love any or all of them? Maybe Tiger has that much love to give—he certainly has that much money. However, one thing is clear, not all of his lovers were willing to share his 'love', especially Elin who felt—and rightfully by all accounts—that she had an exclusive right to it all.

On the other hand, maybe Tiger was the one who needed more love, more adulation, more worship, than any one of his lovers could give. Maybe he felt that by giving his affections (something quite short of love) so profligately he was gaining something in return—the love and adoration of all these women. To believe and act as though everyone should have your bests interests at heart, as though everyone around you should sacrifice themselves to satisfy your needs and desires is something short of true love. Though it is a sort of self-love, and it can be quite costly, for, ironically, in order to satisfy itself the self in love with itself must ultimately sacrifice itself—something it cannot allow itself to do. That is why, frankly, I fear for Tiger. Unless he faces this paradox down, he could become suicidal. But I digress.

This 'I want to be adored' attitude seems to be a wrongful attitude, at least on our vaunted account of true love. It ignores the true cost of truly loving. In love, one does not give up one's self in the expectation of getting something in return from the objects of one's affections. One does it for and in the best interests of the loved one. One sacrifices one's interests. One hopes one's love is reciprocated, but this can never be guaranteed. To love is to risk everything.

Still, none of us is perfect at love. None of us can be. We cannot give ourselves completely. We are selfish. We are individuals with our own wants and needs. We have boundaries. We are, in short, human—not divine. And we must take ourselves as we find ourselves.

Perhaps it would pay, in this season of love, to remember this one thing: Love is Action. Actions have costs. When we love something or someone, we necessarily sacrifice something of ourselves, whether we mean to or not and whether we know it or not—it isn't always obvious. And we each only have so much to give. Yet, ironically, the more love we truly give, the more likely we are to receive love in return; not the sort of love that feeds our selfish self-love, but love which replenishes and restores us, that has our best interest at heart and that is willing to sacrifice for our betterment (not, say, our ego).


Chris Farley - Interview Paul Mc Cartney (SNL) - MyVideo

So, love widely and love wisely. That is my wish for y'all for the Holidays!

Love,
Jim H.

Truth, Politics, & Running—A Follow-Up

A quick follow-up to this post. In that earlier Family-of-Values post, I discussed the nature of truth as both a political and journalistic value. This clip of Dana Perino, the former spokesperson for the President of the United States (G.W. Bush) illustrates the point.

She is simply and obviously wrong when she states that "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." It's a ludicrous statement on its face, but she says it with a straight face as if she believes it. This is why I do not miss the former administration: one could never tell when they were lying or were ignorant, and trying to sort it out was maddening. Recall Scott McClelland telling the press that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had assured him they had nothing to do with outing CIA operative Valerie Plame when their (and VP Cheney's) fingerprints were all over the operation.

Here, it's not clear whether Perino is lying, or mistaken, or actually believes that 9/11 happened on someone else's watch. And it doesn't matter which. She is simply wrong.

Hannity had an obligation, likewise, to correct the record. Surely he knew different. Yet he said nothing and let the moment pass, doubling the offense.

It's clear neither of them (or the other guest, Varney) cared one whit for the truth of the matter. They are nihilistic with respect to the value of truth.

There are undoubtedly some who watch that program who believe what she said. And others who would like to believe it, forgetting how the conservative administration fell asleep at the switch. It is part of the misleading, revisionist narrative these conservatives hope to weave.

Remember the phrase cui bono? Loosely translated it means "Who benefits?" Who benefits from such a pernicious lapse of truth-telling? Not the current administration or its party. Whenever the Bushians engaged in these sorts of Rovian tactics, it was always for their own benefit. It's odd how self-serving their 'mistakes' always tended to be...

-------------------
On a separate "blegstitution" note, one of my readers—Frances Madeson—has nominated my Blunderbuss post for the 3QuarksDaily Politics Prize. Thanks, Frances. I am honored. And even if you disagreed with my opinion on the matter (JMP?), I ask you to go over to 3QuarksDaily, read the nominated posts, and vote—preferably for me. The nominated posts are in alphabetical order, so mine is at the end. [I will append this message to all my posts until the voting deadline.]

-------------------
Oh yeah, one other thing, following up my Fringe posts. Here I am at mile marker 9. Note the shoes. LOL. ROFLMAO.

Family of Values: Truth

This is an inaugural post in what I propose to be an on-going, though intermittent, series discussing some core Western values—e.g., Truth, Knowledge, Meaning, Beauty, Justice, Fairness, Equality, Respect, Love, Goodness, Kindness, Wisdom, Creativity, Rationality, Freedom, Order, The Good Life, etc.

In 1986, Harry Frankfurt first published an essay in the magazine 'Raritan' entitled On Bullshit. Bullshit is, essentially, a disregard for the the truth of what one says. It isn't quite lying—which is deliberately stating something that is untrue—it is, on Frankfurt's account, something worse. When later published in book form in 2005, Frankfurt's essay seemed to capture the zeitgeist of the time. Public figures were more interested in advancing an agenda than speaking truth. Sales and marketing and PR forces were more interested in selling credit default swaps or SUVs or mid-East wars or fraudulent memoirs or $5/gallon oil than counting their true costs.

Bullshit heedlessly admixes truths with untruths. Bullshit leaves the hearer confused, foundering, scrambling for a purchase on reality. In politics, bullshit is particularly useful in a politics of a certain style. This style does not fret about hypocrisy or correspondence with reality; rather, it uses every means at its disposal to assail its adversaries. That is its sole purpose. That is to say, bullshit is a tool in the politics of destruction, rather than construction. It is part and parcel of the politics of force, rather than of consensus. Inconvenient truths, on this model, are scorned. Truth-tellers in the Bush administration, e.g., were often ridiculed (Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke) or silenced (Lawrence Lindsay, climate scientists) or publicly attacked (Plame/Wilson) or simply shit-canned (Shinseki).

Why is truth so devalued in our society? Philosophers have long recognized that truth is a "meta" value. To say something is true is to make a value-statement about a statement-of-fact. We don't say 'the snow is true', e.g. We say, rather, 'snow is white.' And, along with Alfred Tarski, we say further "the statement 'snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white."

So, when we say something is a "meta" value we are dealing in the world of modernism, the world of analysis, the world of metaphysics (semantics) strictly construed: a Tractarian world, if you will, where what matters is 'what is the case.' We are dealing with normative statements about other statements, not statements about the world. And the only legitimate statements are statements that are grounded in knowledge. Truth does not exist in the real world; it exists only as a value in our attempt to understand facts about the real world.

We are living, however, in what many would call a post-modern world. A world where authenticity, simplicity, and action are prime. Not a world of thought, complexity, and reflection. In such a world, it doesn't really matter what you think; it matters what you feel. It doesn't matter whether you understand something; it matters what your opinion is. It doesn't matter what you know; it matters what you believe. It doesn't matter what is true; it matters who you are and what your attitude is—say or do what you will. So long as your point-of-view prevails.

But there is nothing new about this post-modern world; it is a reversion to the world of the sophists, the target of much of Socrates's arguments. In this morass, truth is merely one among any number of competing values (if that), and the people who try to tell the truth are shouted down either by the people with the platforms and the agendas or the ignoramuses (or, more likely, a toxic combination of both).

Truth is uninteresting, boring even. Journalists who try to be truthful are grey. Factual. So what if snow is white? So what if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the atrocities of 9/11? So what if Iraq had no WMD? So what if the surpluses in the public treasury have been siphoned off by politically-connected private interests who, in turn, use their wealth and influence to prop up their political benefactors? So what if Dick Cheney tells a flat-out lie on camera to Gloria Borger? So what if the sky is falling?

Advocacy journalists, on the other hand, are interesting. Dynamic. Yellow. They can rant and rave and say pretty much whatever they please ungoverned by (or at least not restricted to) truth, so long as their ratings or readership stays high—which they will.

As an aside: It's amazing how much that passes for 'news' on the cable news networks originates from Public Relations firms. That, I think, is the story of the age that continues to go untold. Rather than investigating and reporting, these news organizations passively and mostly unquestioningly rely on what they are spoon-fed by professionals whose job it is to advance the agendas of their clients, whether they be celebrities or politicians or government entities.

To end this first piece in this series, I'll leave you with a quote from this article which calls contemporary journalists to be accountable for truth:

"we need journalists who scrutinize and question not just government officials, PR releases, and leaked documents, but their own preconceptions about every aspect of their business. We need journalists who think about how many examples are required to assert a generalization, what the role of the press ought to be in the state, how the boundaries of words are fixed or indeterminate in Wittgensteinian ways, and how their daily practice does or does not resemble art or science." Carlin Romano, "We Need 'Philosophy of Journalism'". 11/15/09 The Chronicle Review (h/t the estimable Arts & Letters Daily)