Category: Human Predicament

Moral Failure and Moral Capacity

Not being capable of truly horrendous crimes and sins, we moral mediocrities sin in a manner commensurate with our limitations. So I had the thought: we are all equally sinful in that we all sin to the limit of our capacity. It is not that we always sin, but that when we do, we sin only as much as we are capable of.  So James 'Whitey' Bulger and I are equal in that we both sin, when we do, only to the limit of our capacity. It is just that his capacity is vastly greater than mine. I am a slacker when it comes to sin.  I have never murdered anyone because he knew too much, dismembered and disposed of the body, enjoyed a fine dinner, and then slept like a baby. Bulger did this to a beautiful young woman, the girlfriend of one of his pals when girl and pal broke up. "You're going to a better place," said the pal to the girl right before Bulger did the deed.

A while back I re-viewed* portions of the 1967 cinematic adaptation of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Can I take credit for not being a thief and a murderer when I simply don't have it in me to do such things? Instead I do things so paltry it seems absurd to confess them, the confessing of which is possibly indicative of an ego-enhancing moral scrupulosity, a peccadillo if a sin at all.

On the other hand, the harder you strive for a high standard, the more of a moral wretch you perceive yourself to be.

The moral life is no easy life either morally or intellectually.  That is to say: it is hard to live it and hard to think clearly and truly about it and what it entails.

________________

*The pedant in me would have you note the difference between review and re-view.

The Peninsular Man

No man is an island. He can't be. Ought he be a continent? No.

The healthy man is a peninsula. He is connected to the mainland, and nourished by that connection, but he doesn't allow himself to be influenced from all sides. A part of him juts into the oceanic. 

The peninsular life is best.

……………………………….

A long-time reader responds (30 November 2018):

So I read your post just now a) at the outer extremity of a literal peninsula; b) linked to my life-partner only by the narrow isthmus of the telephone; c) suddenly disconnected from the quotidian working world by my recent layoff; d) having spent the last decade or two immersing myself in old books and questioning all that I thought I knew; and e) generally projecting myself further and further outward from the presentist mass-society craton into the "oceanic" of the past, the unknowable future, and the great mystery of creation and human awareness.

In other words: peninsular.

Many are the pleasures of blog. One is the pleasure of giving food for thought. Another is the pleasure of receiving appreciation.

Socializing and Idle Talk

Some good comes from socializing if only as a concession to our ineluctable social nature. Only a beast or a god could live without it. But even I do too much of it.  In society one is apt to talk too much about too little. Review the previous day's unnecessary conversations.  On balance, did they profit you or not?  Did they enhance your peace of mind, or damage it? 

You might think that intellectual talk is better than talking about the weather. But it can be as bad as mundane trivial talk, an empty posturing, a vain showmanship without roots or results. But worse still is ‘spiritual talk’ which can distract us from both action and (what is better) contemplative inaction.

There is a deep paradox here. It is speech that elevates man above the animals and makes him god-like. And yet it is speech by which he debases himself in a way no animal could, not that the above examples are the most debasing.   

Compare MT 12:36, "But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." (KJV)

Whether or not Christ was God, he was one of humanity's great teachers. One does well to ponder the above verse, and in particular, its harshness.  Just why should every idle word get one in trouble with the Moral Authority of the universe?

Welcome to Finitude

You are largely stuck with the guy you are and you have to make the most of it. There are things you don't like about him, but some of them just can't be helped. Change what can be changed; accept what can't.

Neither god nor beast, a man is a being in-between.

Our predicament is at once horrifying and exhilarating. Not to mention a source of endless blog fodder.

Why Are People So Easy to Swindle?

People are so easy to swindle because the swindler has as accomplices the victim's own moral defects.  When good judgment and moral sense are suborned by lust or greed or sloth or vanity or anger, the one swindled participates willingly in his own undoing.  In the end he swindles himself.

How is it, for example, that Bernie Madoff 'made off' with so much loot?  You have  otherwise intelligent people who are lazy, greedy and vain: too lazy to do their own research and exercise due diligence, too greedy to be satisfied with the going rate of return, and too vain to think that anything bad can happen to such high-placed and sophisticated investors as themselves.

Or take the Enron employees.  They invested their 401 K money in the very firm that that paid their salaries!  Now how stupid is that?  But they weren't stupid; they enstupidated themselves by allowing the subornation of their good sense by their vices.

The older I get the more I appreciate that our problems, most of them and at bottom, are moral in nature.  Why, for example, are we and our government in dangerous debt?  A lack of money?  No, a lack of virtue.  People cannot curtail desire, defer gratification, be satisfied with what they have, control their lower natures, and pursue truly choice-worthy ends.

Acting with Others versus Talking with Others

An excellent insight from Alain's essay, "The Ills of Others":

To act with others is always good; to talk with others for the sake of talking, complaining, and recriminating, is one of the greatest scourges on earth . . . . (Alain on Happiness, Frederick Ungar 1973, p. 160)

I once built a small dock with another man. We had little or nothing in common intellectually or spiritually. You could say we lived on different planets. Conversation with him about any matter beyond the sensibly present was pointless or worse. But with tools in hand, confronting the recalcitrance of matter, with a definite physical end in view, engaged in a common project, his words were guided and anchored, and our words together served a purpose. Acting together we achieved something. The job done, the handiwork admired, I found myself actually liking the guy.

But had we been just talking, I would have found it a moral challenge not to be disgusted with him. Few possess the mental equipment and discipline to engage in fruitful conversation that is not anchored in the mundane.

Again I note, as in an earlier Alain post, the French love of the universal quantifier: "To act with others is always good. . . ." Obviously, acting with others is not always good, for reasons you an easily supply yourself. So why the exaggeration? For literary effect.

Please don't accuse me of committing a hasty generalization. I am not inferring some such proposition as 'French writers misuse universal quantifiers for literary effect' from this one instance, or this instance plus the one cited in the earlier post; what I am doing is illustrating an antecedently established general proposition. This is a distinction one should observe, but is too often not observed, namely, the distinction between generalizing and illustrating. Someone who illustrates a general claim by providing an example is not inferring the general claim from the example.

Alain (Emile Chartier)

Some 19th Century Rules for Social Intercourse

The wise man abstains from an excess of socializing as from an excess of whisky; but just as a little whisky at the right time and in the right place is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life, so too is a bit of socializing. But he who quits his solitude to sally forth among men must do so with his maxims at the ready if he values his peace of mind.

Herewith, a faithful transcription from a 19th century work, The Corsair: A Gazette of Literature, Art, Dramatic Criticism, Fashion and Novelty, Volume 1, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Timothy O. Porter 1839,  831 pages. (Obviously, not to be confused with the Danish publication that pilloried Kierkegaard):

Never discuss politics or religion with those who hold opinions opposite to yours; they are topics that heat in handling, until they burn your fingers; never talk learnedly on topics you know, it makes people afraid of you; never talk on subjects you don't know, it makes people despise you; never argue, no man is worth the trouble of convincing, and the better your reasoning the more obstinate people become; never pun on a man's words; it is as bad as spitting in his face. In short, whenever practicable, let others perform and do you look on: a seat in the dress circle is preferable to a part in the play. — This is my rule.

A pretty good rule, one of what Schopenhauer calls Weltweisheit, worldly wisdom. In a fallen world, one needs such maxims. Did you know that Schopenhauer believed in something like Original Sin despite his being an atheist? 

"Never argue, no man is worth the trouble of convincing."  This is sage advice for almost all social situations.

I would add: never in general correct anyone's grammatical, logical, or factual mistakes unless it is your job to do so; the exception of course is serious discourse among serious and well-qualified people. Avoid talk of money if you don't want to be taken to be either poor-mouthing or bragging. Sex-tinged jokes can get you into trouble.  And so on.

Pascal 2Should we go all the way with  Pascal? “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

To paraphrase a line often attributed (rightly or wrongly) to the cowboy wit, Will Rogers:

 

Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut.

That of course is an exaggeration. But exaggerations are rhetorically useful if they are in the direction of truths.  The truth here is that the damage caused by idle talk is rarely offset by its paltry benefits.

My mind drifts back to the fourth or fifth grade and the time a nun planted an image in my mind that remains.  She likened the tongue to a sword capable of great damage, positioned behind two 'gates,' the teeth and the lips.  Those gates are there for a reason, she explained, and the sword should come out only when it can be well deployed. 

Related: Safe Speech

Now if you bear all of the above in mind, you may safely sally forth into society as long as your sojourn is brief and your maxims are 'cocked and locked.'

Years Pass, Dates Repeat

You were born only once but every year you have a birthday. Equally, you will die only once but every year you have a death day, the date on which you will die. It is just that you don't know what it is.

Suppose you could know the date of your death but not the year. Suppose that date is 16 October.  Then on that date you would be a little worried and especially careful, both physically and morally. And then on the 17th you could relax for a whole year.

But even this comfort is not granted us.

Could All Paths be Dead Ends?

I wrote:

Reason in the end must confess its own infirmity.  It cannot deliver on its promises. The truth-seeker must explore other avenues.  Religion is one, mysticism is another. 

Vito Caiati responds:

My concern is as follows: While I agree that “reason in the end must confess its own infirmity,” I am troubled by the possibility that religion and mysticism terminate, for many, in their own dead ends. Regarding religious belief, too many sincere seekers, perhaps those not blessed with a religious disposition, the apparent gift of a minority of humanity, end up concluding, to quote Pascal, that  “[J]e suis fait d'une telle sorte que je ne puis croire” (“I am so made that I cannot believe”; Pensées Le livre de Poche, 1991, 464). I realize that there are a variety of theological responses to this declaration, including the debilitating effects of original sin on the human soul and mind, but these attempts merely explain away or rationalize what is for many a painful reality. As for mysticism, its truths, real or supposed, are enjoyed, as you know, by a very tiny fraction of humanity, East and West. 

Given these states of affairs, is it not possible that many (most?) of us are trapped in our ignorance of higher things? That none of the three ways—reason, religion, or mysticism—is a viable alternative? That our fate is tragic and miserable?

I hope that the answer to each of these questions is a negative one, for I continue to search for a way forward.

In The Infirmity of Reason versus the Certitude of Faith, I list the following options, omitting mysticism:

John Bishop (University of Auckland) has a book , Believing by Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology and Ethics of Religious Faith (OUP, 2007) which is perhaps the best book that I have read on the subject.  He argues for what he calls a ‘supra-evidential fideism’ in which  one is ‘morally entitled’ to “take as true in one’s practical and theoretical deliberations” a claim that lacks  evidence sufficient for  epistemically-justified acceptance or rejection.

It is a developed Jamesian’ approach to the right to believe. He does not allow for beliefs that go contrary to the weight of evidence, thus he rejects Wittgensteinian fideism. One may believe beyond the evidence, but not against the evidence. He holds that one must always respect the canons of rational inquiry and not dismiss them, even in matters of faith. Yet, by the very nature of the faith-issue, they can be transcended with moral entitlement.

Nor does he allow for ‘induced willings-to believe.’  He holds that one who already has an inclination / disposition to believe is morally entitled to do so if the issue is important, forced, and by the nature of the issue cannot be decided upon the basis of ‘rationalist empiricist’ evidential practice.I came across  the book on a list of important books in philosophy of religion on Prosblogion.

I think that it is a type of fideism that combines your categories B and D – fideism and reasoned faith.

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit, Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore, Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more, See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

(tr. Gerard Manley Hopkins.)

But as religion becomes established in the world in the form of churches, sects, and denominations with worldly interests, it becomes less  of a quest and more of a worldly hustle. Dogmatics displaces inquiry, and fund-raising faith. The once alive becomes ossified.  All human institutions are corruptible, and are eventually corrupted.

Mature religion must be more quest than conclusions. It is vastly more a seeking than a finding. More a cleansing of windows and a polishing  of mirrors than a glimpsing. And certainly more a glimpsing than a comfortable resting upon dogmas. When philosophy and religion and mysticism and science are viewed as quests they complement one another. And this despite the tensions among Athens, Jerusalem, Benares, and Alexandria.

The critic of religion wants to pin it down, reducing it to dogmatic contents, so as to attack it where it is weakest. Paradoxically, the atheist 'knows' more about God than the sophisticated theist — he knows so much that he knows no such thing could exist. He 'knows' the divine nature and knows that it is incompatible with the existence of evil — to mention one line of attack.  What he 'knows,' of course, is only the concept he himself has fabricated and projected.  Aquinas, by contrast, held that the existence of God is far better known than God's nature — which remains shrouded in a cloud of unknowing.

The (immature) religionist also wants religion pinned down and dogmatically spelled out for purposes of self-definition, doxastic security, other-exclusion, worldly promotion, and political leverage. This is a reason why reformers like Jesus are met with a cold shoulder — or worse.