November 2009 – Page 8 – Maverick Philosopher

Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good."

Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain.

Politics is a practical business. It is always about the lesser of evils, except when it is about the least of evils. It is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses willy-nilly. His not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.

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Eric Hoffer on the ‘Root Causes’ of Crime

Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 57:

Poverty causes crime! That is what they are always shoving down our throats, the misbegotten bastards! What crap! Poverty does not cause crime. If it did we would have been buried in crime for most of our history . . . .

Why is common sense like this incomprehensible to liberals? Poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtue.

Eric Hoffer on Contentment

Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 25:

I need little to be contented. Two meals a day, tobacco, books that hold my interest, and a little writing each day. This to me is a full life.

And this after a full day at the San Francisco waterfront unloading ships. And we're talking cheap tobacco smoked after a meal of Lipton soup and Vienna sausage in a humble apartment in a marginal part of town. Hoffer, who had it tough indeed, had the wisdom to be satisfied with what he had. Call it the paradox of plenty: those who had to struggle in the face of adversity developed character and worth, while those with opportunities galore and an easy path became slackers and malcontents and 'revolutionaries.' Adding to the paradox is that those who battled adversity learned gratitude while those who had it handed to them became ingrates.

Good Old Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, p. 161: "In the eyes of the true believer, people who have no holy cause are without backbone and character — a pushover for men of faith."

The True Believer was published in 1951. I read chunks of it in the '60s and returned to it in December of 2003. Hoffer had Osama bin Laden and his fatal mistake pegged fifty years before the events of 9/11/01. The prescience of this autodidactic stevedore is truly remarkable. Has there ever been a more independent independent scholar?

Proof that I am a Native American

A while back, a front page story in the local rag of record, The Arizona Republic, implied that one is either a native American, a Black, or an Anglo. Now with my kind of surname, I am certainly no Anglo. And even though I am a 'person of color,' my color inclining toward a sort of tanned ruddiness, I am undoubtedly not Black either.

It follows that I am a native American. This conclusion is independently supported by the following argument:

1. I am a native Californian
2. California is in America
3. If x is native to locality L, and L is within the boundaries of M, then x is a native M-er.
Therefore
I am a native American.

Note that (2) is true whether 'America' is taken to refer to the USA or to the continent of North America.

When Does A Human Life Begin?

This from a reader:

I enjoy reading Maverick Philosopher even though I seldom agree with the conservative viewpoint. The thing that I find most interesting about your articles on abortion is that they really do not address what I consider to be the central issue and that is when does human life begin. Zygote, blastomere, embryo, fetus? I would be interested in your ideas.

Well, I did address this question on the old blog. But in philosophy one is never done revising and re-thinking, so let me take another stab at this.

1. Note first that your question — When does human life begin? — is not exact. Presumably, what you are asking is: When does a human life begin? Our concern is with the origin of particular human lives, not human life in general. Even so, the question remains unclear. Here are two possible disambiguations of 'When does a human life begin?' given that the context is the morality of abortion:

Q1. When does a life become human in a sense of 'human' that justifies ascription of the right to life?

Q2. When does a life become human in the biological sense of 'human'?

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Middle-Sized Happiness

Life can be good. Middle-sized happiness is within reach and some of us reach it. It doesn't require much: a modicum of health and wealth; work one finds meaningful however it may strike others; the independence of mind not to care what others think; the depth of mind to appreciate that there is an inner citadel into which one can retreat at will for rest and recuperation when the rude impacts of the world become too obtrusive; a relatively stable economic and political order that allows the tasting of the fruits of such virtues as hard work and frugality; a political order secure enough to allow for a generous exercise of liberty and a rich development of individuality; a rationally-based hope that the present, though fleeting, will find completion either here or elsewhere; a suitable spouse whose differences are complementations rather than contradictions; a good-natured friend who can hold up his end of a chess game. . . .

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Ambition and Age

Lack of ambition in the young is rightly seen as a defect. But here is an old man still driven by his old ambitions, none of which were of too lofty a nature. Is he not a fool? For his old ambitions, appropriate as they were in youth, have become absurd in old age.

His upbringing was hard and his circumstances straitened. He early resolved to better himself economically, and he succeeded. Hard work and the old-time virtues brought him wealth. But having 'arrived,' he did not know what to do with his arrival except to keep on piling up loot. Loot, however, is but a means to end, and our old man's ends are, like he himself, coming to an end.

It is time for him to abandon ambition and fly into the arms of fair Philosophia, there to meditate on such truths as: One cannot tow a U-Haul with a hearse. But death, the muse of philosophy, will catch him long before it a-muses him. The Reaper's scythe will cut him down before it moves him to thought.

Ambition and Happiness

Viewed in one way, ambition is a good thing, and its absence in people, especially in the young, we consider to be a defect. Without ambition, there can be no realization of one's potential. Happiness is connected with the latter. We are happy when we are active in pursuit of choice-worthy goals that we in some measure attain. On the other hand, there is no happiness without contentment, which requires the curtailing of ambition. There is thus a tension between two components of happiness. It is a tension between happiness as self-actualization and happiness as contentment.

To actualize oneself one must strive. One strives for what one doesn't have. Striving is predicated upon felt lack. But one who lacks what he desires is not content, not at peace, and so is unhappy in one sense of the term. One who longs for what is permanently out of reach will be permanently unhappy, always striving, never arriving. Not only will he not get what he wants, he will fail to appreciate what he has.

To be happy one must strive for, and in some measure attain, choice-worthy ends. That requires ambition. But the attaining is not enough; one must rest in and enjoy what one has attained. That requires the curtailing of ambition.

Socialism and Ambition

Like a commitment to socialism, worldly ambition is natural and appropriate in the young, but a sign of foolishness in the old.

Ambition and Disillusion

The young, astride their steeds of ambition, should gallop boldly into the fray. But the old should know when to quit the game and dismount into dis-illusion. Homo ludens, when sapient, knows when to become de-luded.

Philosopher of Religion Complains, “I Don’t Get No Respect”

Like Rodney Dangerfield, we philosophers of religion get no respect. As philosopher of religion Nelson Pike puts it,

If you are in a company of people of mixed occupations, and somebody asks what you do, and you say you are a college professor, a glazed look comes into his eye. If you are in a company of professors from various departments, and somebody asks what is your field, and you say philosophy, a glazed look comes into the eye. If you are at a conference of philosophers, and somebody asks what you are working on, and you say philosophy of religion . . . [Quoted in D. Dennett, Breaking the Spell, 2006, p. 33)

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