George MacDonald: An Anthology, ed. C. S. Lewis, Macmillan 1960, p. 41, #57:
A man is in bondage to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself.
Category: Human Predicament
Moral Progress
It is a sign of moral progress when, considering one's peccadilloes, one begins to wonder about the appropriateness of the diminutive suffix.
Thinking Concretely About Death
When my death seems 'acceptable,' a 'natural' occurrence, I wonder whether I am thinking about it concretely and honestly enough. I wonder whether I am really confronting my own utter destruction as a subject for whom there is a world, as opposed to myself as an object in the world. If I view myself as object, I can 'hold myself in reserve' and imagine that I as subject will somehow survive destruction. I can think of death as a drastic transition rather than as annihilation — which it may well be.
If you say it is certain that death is annihilation, then I pronounce you a dogmatic fool.
From Slime to Subjectivity
When we procreate we cause not only the existence of more animals, but also of more points of view, with each new subject the center of its own world. Whether this is good or bad, it is certainly amazing! Copulation as world-making.
Homo Homini Lupus
A 28-year-old Gypsy girl from the Tene Bimbo crime family 'befriends' an 85 year-old single man, marries him, and then poisons him, causing his death, in an attempt to steal his assets. The two were made for each other, the evil cunning of the woman finding its outlet in the utter foolishness of the man. What lessons are to be learned from this?
The first is one that serves as a criterion to distinguish conservative from liberal. The latter lives and dies in the pious belief that people are inherently good and that it is merely such contingent and remediable factors as environment, opportunity, upbringing and the like that prevent the good from manifesting itself. The conservative knows better: human nature is deeply flawed, structurally flawed, flawed beyond the hope of merely human amelioration. The conservative takes seriously the idea of original sin, if not the particulars of any particular doctrinal formulation. Even the atheist Schopenhauer was well-disposed toward the doctrine.
Though capable of near- angelic goodness, man is capable of near-diabolical evil. History records it, and only the foolish ignore it. The fact of radical evil cannot be gainsaid, as even the Enlightenment philosopher Kant (1781-1804) deeply appreciated. The timber of humanity is crooked, and of crooked timber no perfectly straight thing has ever been made. (Be it noted en passant that conservatives need to be careful when they generalize about the Enlightenment and wax critical of it. They might want to check their generalizations against the greatest of the Enlightenment philosophers, the Sage of Koenigsberg.)
My second point will elicit howls of rage from liberals, but their howling is music to my ears. The victim must bear some moral responsibility for the crime, albeit a much lower degree of responsibility than the perpetrator. For he allowed himself to be victimized by failing to make use of his faculties. (I assume the 85 year-old was not senile.) He did not think: "What could an attractive young woman see in a decrepit old specimen like me? What is she after?" He let his vanity and ego swamp and suborn his good judgment. He had a long life to learn the lesson that romantic love is more illusion than reality, but he failed to apply his knowledge. Blaming the victim is, up to a point, justified.
So man is a wolf to man and man is a lamb to man. Wolf and lamb 'need' each other. Be neither. You have a moral obligation to be neither.
Story here.
Journeys and Preparations
We plan our journeys long and short. We lay our plans for trips abroad well in advance. And those who leave their homeland and emigrate to another country take special care. Why then are we so careless about the journey on which all must embark and none return?
"Because it is a journey into sheer nonexistence. One needn't be concerned about a future self that won't exist!"
Are you sure about that? Perhaps you are right; but how do you know? Isn't this a question meriting some consideration?
Agenda Fetishism
You know you're list-obsessive when, having completed a task, you add an entry to your 'to do' list just so you can cross it off.
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Agenda is the plural of agendum, something to be done. The infinitive form of the corresponding verb is agere, to do.
Age quod agis is a well-known saying which is a sort of Latin call to mindfulness: do what you are doing. Be here now in the activity at hand.
Legend has it that Johnny Ringo was an educated man. (Not so: a story for later.) But so he is depicted over and over. In this scene from Tombstone, the best of the movies about Doc Holliday and the shoot-out at the O. K. Corral, Ringo trades Latinisms with the gun-totin' dentist, who was indeed an educated man and a fearless and deadly gunslinger to boot, his fearlessness a function of his 'consumption.' I don't mean his consumption of spirits, but his tuberculosis. His was the courage of an embittered man, close to death.
The translations in the video clip leave something to be desired. Age quod agis gets translated as 'do what you do best'; the literal meaning, however, is do what you are doing. Age is in the imperative mood; quod is 'what'; agis is the second person singular present tense of agere and means: 'you do' or 'you are doing.'
Prudential Anti-Natalism
Karl White writes:
If one assumes life has a negative value, or at the very least is a problem that needs solving, then surely it would follow that antinatalism is the prudential course. If we are unable to discern a meaning or a solution to life, then there can hardly be any justification for dragging someone else into said dilemma kicking and screaming (literally), while we attempt to work out our own salvation or lack thereof. That's why I subscribe to a form of prudential antinatalism. This differs from the kind that says life is and always a negative thing, as for all I know there could be a pay-off at the end of it currently indiscernible to humans, but for want of indisputable proof then I cannot see any reason to expose someone else to the dilemma of life, or at least I personally cannot do it, given I cannot find any ultimate meaning or justification for my own existence, at this present time at least.
This entry will attempt to articulate and develop Mr. White's suggestion.
What do we know? We do not know whether human life has an overall positive or negative value. It could have a positive value despite appearances to the contrary. For example, it could be that after our sojourn through this vale of tears, the veil of ignorance will be lifted and we will find ourselves in a realm of peace and light in which every tear is dried and the sense of things is revealed. It could be that the vale of tears is also a vale of soul-making in which some of us 'earn our wings.' But this is an article of faith, not of knowledge. We don't know whether there are further facts, hidden from us at present, in whose light the world as we experience it here and now will come to be seen as overall good.
What we do know is that the problem of the value of human existence is a genuine problem and thus one that needs solving. It needs solving presumably because it is not merely a theoretical problem in axiology but a problem with implications for practical ethics. In particular: Is procreation morally permissible or not?
But does it follow from what we know that anti-natalism is the prudential course? Karl answers in the affirmative. I don't know whether Karl is an extreme or a moderate anti-natalist, but I don't think it matters for the present discussion. Extreme anti-natalism is the view espoused by David Benatar according to which "it would be better if there were no more humans" (David Benatar and David Wasserman, Debating Procreation, Oxford UP 2015, 13) from which axiological thesis there follows the deontic conclusion that "all procreation is wrong." (12) A moderate anti-natalist could hold that most procreation is wrong.
One assumption that Karl seems to be making is that, absent any redemption 'from above,' the value of life for most humans is on balance negative. This assumption I find very plausible. But note that it rests on a still deeper assumption, namely, that the value of life can be objectively assessed or evaluated. This assumption is not obviously correct, but it too is plausible. Here, then, is the argument. It is a kind of 'moral safety' argument. To be on the morally safe side, we ought not procreate.
Argument for Prudential Anti-Natalism
1) There is an objective 'fact of the matter' as to whether or not human life is on balance of positive or negative value.
2) Absent any redemption 'from above,' the value of life for most humans is on balance negative, that is, the harms of existence outweigh the benefits of existence.
3) We do not know that the value of life for most humans is not on balance negative, i.e., that the harms of existence are compensated by the benefits of existence.
4) We do know that bringing children into the world will expose them to physical, mental, and spiritual suffering, and that all of those so exposed will also actually suffer the harms of existence.
5) It is morally wrong to subject people to harms when it is not known that the harms will be compensated by a greater good.
6) To have children is to subject them to such harms. Therefore:
7) It is morally wrong to procreate.
Now you have heard me say that there are no compelling arguments in philosophy, and this is certainly no exception. I'll mention two possible lines of rebuttal.
a) Reject premise (1) along Nietzschean lines as explained in my most recent Nietzsche post. It might be urged that any negative judgment on the value of life merely reflects the lack of vitality of the one rendering the judgment. No healthy specimen takes suffering as an argument against against living and procreating! I do not endorse this view, but I feel its pull. Related: Nietzsche and National Socialism.
b) Reject (3). There are those who, standing fast in their faith, would claim to know by a sort of cognitio fidei that children and life itself are divine gifts, and that in the end all the horrors and injustices of this life will be made good.
Old Mountaineers and Bold Mountaineers
I'm no climber, but I love walking in the mountains. On a solo backpacking adventure in the magnificent Sierra Nevada some years back I overheard a snatch of conversation:
There are old mountaineers, and there are bold mountaineers, but there are no old bold mountaineers.
Ueli Steck, the great Swiss climber, is dead at 40, having fallen near Everest.
I have repeatedly asked myself, why I do this. The answer is pretty simple: because I want to do it and because I like it. I don’t like being restricted. When I climb, I feel free and unrestricted; away from any social commitments. This is what I am looking for.
I have a better answer. Steck climbed because he was very, very good at it, and we humans love doing what we are good at. Freedom from social commitments can be had in far less perilous ways.
I am reminded of something the great marathoner Bill Rodgers once said when asked why he ran and won 26.2 mile races at a blistering sub-five-minute-per-mile pace. "I like to be be fit." (I quote from memory) But of course one can be very fit indeed without running such a punishing distance at such a punishing pace.
Why Do You Carry a Notebook?
If I am wearing a shirt with pockets, I almost always carry a 3 X 5 notebook and a pen in my top left pocket. People sometimes ask why I carry it. I have a prepared response:
It's in case I get a good idea. Haven't had one yet, but you never know.
And if I am out walking around, another element of my schtick is my stick which is distinctive and also elicits questions. Ask me why I carry it and I have a line at the ready:
Time was when I needed it to beat off women; but now I just need it to keep from toppling over.
I have found that the second line doesn't go over as well. While both involve self-deprecation, which will often endear you to people, or at least blunt the blade of their hidden hostility, the self-deprecation in the second line comes too late for some.
So I cannot recommend the second line in all circumstances. The perceived machismo of the first clause of the second line will sometimes stick in the craw of a humorless feminist.
Perhaps the best advice I could give is to paraphrase a line attributed 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
Be Neither Bohemian nor Bourgeois
The barfly and the gambler, the flâneur and the floozy, fritter away their time. And they are condemned for so doing by the solid bourgeois.
But the latter thinks, though he may not say, that the pursuits of the monastery and the ivory tower, though opposite to the low life's dissipation, are equally time-wasting. Prayer, meditation, study for its own sake, translation and transmission of culture, the vita contemplativa, Pieperian leisure, otium liberale, moral scrupulosity, mindfulness, the various disciplines of palate and penis, heart and memory, working out one's salvation with diligence – all will evoke a smile from the worldly bourgeois fellow, the man of substance solidly planted in the self-satisfied somnolence of middle-class mediocrity.
He's tolerant of course, and superficially respectful, but the respect becomes real only after the time-waster has managed to turn a buck or secure a livelihood from his time-wasting by becoming a teacher in a college, say, or a pastor of a church.
Obscure and Grateful
We who are obscure ought to be grateful for it. It is wonderful to be able to walk down the street and be taken for an ordinary schlep. A little recognition from a few high-quality individuals is all one needs. Fame can be a curse.
The unhinged Mark David Chapman, animated by Holden Caulfield's animus against phoniness, decided that John Lennon was a phony, and so had to be shot.
The mad pursuit of empty celebrity by so many in our society shows their and its spiritual vacuity.
Dolce far Niente
It is sweet to do nothing, but only if if the inactivity comes like the caesura in a line of poetry or the punctuation in a sentence of prose or the rest in a piece of music. Inactivity extended stultifies. At least this is true here below. Genesis 3:19 may be read as 'sentencing' us to activity. Enduring contemplative repose comes later.
Or does the 'sentence' end with a 'full stop'?
Intellect, Emotion, Projection
It takes intellect to discern that people are dominated by their emotions, but the intellectual who is capable of understanding this is often prevented from understanding it by his tendency to project his intellectuality into others. We often have a hard time appreciating that others are not like us and do not value what we value, or if they do, not to the same extent. My younger self used to make this mistake.
Poverty and Plenty
Material plenty allows the leisure to contemplate one's moral and intellectual and spiritual poverty. So money, far from being the root of all evil, is often conducive, and sometimes necessary, for the uprooting of some evils.
Related: Radix Omnium Malorum. This is one of my best entries. It definitively refutes the widespread notion that money is the root of all evil.