One often hears that money is the root of all evil. But this cannot be true, since money is an abstract form of wealth, wealth is a good thing, and the root of all evil cannot be something good. Perhaps it is the love of money that is supposed to be the root of all evil. But this too is false. Given that money is a good thing, a certain love or desire for its acquisition and preservation is right and proper. To fail to value money would be as foolish as to fail to value physical health. Well then, is it the inordinate love of money that is the root of all evil? Not even this is true. For there are evils whose root is not the inordinate love of money. The most we can truly say is that the inordinate love of money is the root of some evils.
Category: Human Predicament
Neither Angel Nor Beast
Blaise Pascal, Pensées #329:
Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.
The first half of the thought is unexceptionable: man is indeed neither angel nor beast, but, amphibious as he is between matter and spirit, a hybrid and a riddle to himself.
The second half of Pascal's thought, however, is unfair to the beasts. No beast can act the beast the way a man can. No beast is bestial in the way a man can be bestial. The difference is that while the beast acts according to his nature, man freely degrades himself contrary to his nature. Having done so, he allows his freely indulged passions to suborn his intellect: he constructs elaborate rationalizations of his self-degradation.
It is not our animality that corrupts us but our free misuse of our animality, a misuse that derives from our spirtuality.
Gerede
Conversation about trivial matters can be idle and useless, and usually is. But the same is true of conversation about 'deep matters.' In some moods, intellectual and spiritual conversation is more offensive to me than mundane chit-chat. Talk can degenerate into profanation. We need periodic recuperation from it in the form of entry into silence.
Politics and Religion Over Thanksgiving Dinner?
Here is a dilemma some of you will face. You are eating dinner with relatives, and one of the merry crew displays signs of Palin Derangement Syndrome. If you are a conservative, what do you do? Sit there and listen to the drivel? Or stand up for what's right? Start a food fight, literally or figuratively?
It's a dilemma in the strict, as opposed to the Dr. Laura, sense of the term: a situation in which there are exactly two alternatives, both of which are unacceptable. If you let the cretin escape, you do truth and justice a disservice. But if you oppose him or her, then you may ruin the conviviality of the occasion — to put it mildly.
You will have to work this out for yourself. The problem won't arise for me. My dinner party will consist of me, my wife, and my cat. Any offensive opinions will emanate from the television, against which I will be well-armed: fork in one hand, remote control in the other.
On Exaggeration
Why do people exaggerate in serious contexts? The logically prior question is: What is exaggeration, and how does it differ from lying, bullshitting, and metaphorical uses of language? A physician in a radio broadcast the other morning said, "You can't be too thin, too rich, or have too low a cholesterol level."
Note first that the medico was not joking but making a serious point. But he couched this serious point in a sentence which is plainly false. Since he had no intention of deceiving his audience, and since the point he was making (not merely trying to make) about cholesterol is true, he was not lying. He was not bullshitting either since he was not trying to misrepresent himself as knowing something he does not know or more than he knows.
Exaggeration bears some resemblance to metaphor. If I say, 'Sally is a block of ice,' I speak metaphorically or figuratively. What I say is literally false. But by saying it, I manage to convey to the listener some such proposition as that Sally is unemotional and (perhaps) sexually unresponsive. And when the sawbones exaggerated, though he said something literally false, he managed to convey to his audience the true proposition that total cholesterol levels for most of us need reducing.
But I wouldn't want to say that the good doctor was speaking metaphorically. I am merely pointing to a similarity between metaphor and exaggeration. The similarity may consist in the coming apart of sentence meaning and speaker's meaning. In both examples, the sentence meaning is that of a falsehood. The speaker, however, using those literally false sentences means something different from what the words 'by themselves' mean, and manages to convey truths to his hearers.
So I suggest that to understand exaggeration we need to understand metaphor so that we can delimit the former from the latter. But what exactly is metaphor? That's a tough one. Here I catalog three specimens of exaggeration by well-known philosophers.
The Tendency to Exaggerate
Not content to say what is true, people exaggerate thereby turning the true into the false. Three examples from sober philosophers.
Martin Buber, who is certainly no Frenchman, writes that “a melody is not composed of tones, nor a verse of words…” (I and Thou, p. 59) His point is that a melody cannot be reduced to its individual notes, nor a verse to its constituent words. But he expresses this truth in a way that makes it absurdly false. A melody without tones would be no melody at all. The litterateur exaggerates for literary effect, but Buber is no mere litterateur. So what is going on?
For a second example, consider Martin Heidegger. Somewhere in Sein und Zeit he writes that Das Dasein ist nie vorhanden. The human being is never present-at-hand. This is obviously false in that the human being has a body which is present-at-hand in nature as surely as any animal or stone. What he is driving at is the truth — or at least the plausibility — that the human being enjoys a special mode of Being, Existenz, that is radically unlike the Vorhandenheit of the mere thing in nature and the Zuhandenheit of the tool. So why doesn’t he speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, without exaggerating?
And then there is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, according to J. N. Findlay, “took every wrong turn a philosopher can take.” (Personal communication) Wittgenstein’s fideism involves such absurd exaggerations as that religions imply no theoretical views. But when a Christian, reciting the Nicene creed, says “I believe in God the Father, almighty creator of heaven and earth…” he commits himself thereby to the metaphysical view that heaven and earth have a certain ontological status, namely, that of being creatures.
Of course, the Christian is doing more than this: his ‘I believe’ expresses trust in God as a person and not mere belief that certain propositions are true. But to deny that there is any propositional content to his belief would be ludicrous. And yet that appears to be what Wittgenstein is doing.
On Forming Societies at Faint Provocation
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 154, #56:
I am not enamoured overmuch of this modern habit, which forms a society at faint provocation. A man's own problem stares him alone in the face, and it is not to be solved by any association of men. Every new society we join is a fresh temptation to waste time.
Well said. Would Thoreau have joined the Thoreau Society? Merton the Merton Society? Would Groucho Marx have joined a club that would have him as a member?
Seriously, there is something dubious about societies. Were I to read a paper the least bit critical of Thomas Merton at the Merton Society, I would receive a hostile response no matter how good the paper was. I would be taken as attacking their man, someone with whom they identify. In a one-on-one exchange, it is not uncommon for an interlocutor to 'get his back up' if one criticizes, however judiciously, something or someone in whom the interlocutor has invested time and energy. But when there is a bunch of these people reinforcing each other, look out! They close ranks and their critical acumen goes to zero.
Merton, Heidegger, Ayn Rand and so many others who inspire a cult-like following need to have their works discussed critically, and that means: not by followers and not by dismissers, but by the independent. But what happens for the most part is that their works get chewed over lovingly in uncritical enclaves while being ignored or dismissed by those outside the charmed circles.
Dubious Consolation for the Bald
Paul Brunton, who was bald, writes,
I take comfort in the continental proverb,"A hundred years hence we shall all be bald." (Notebooks, VIII, 202.)
I am not bald and the genetics of my lineage suggest the unlikelihood of my becoming bald. But the occasional dream reveals a subconscious anxiety. In one, I caught a glimpse via an array of mirrors of the beginning of a bald spot on the back of my head. But why should the thought of balding induce anxiety if not because the bald spot is a harbinger of the meatless skull each head is headed for?
Hair today, bone tomorrow.
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.
Why Do We Judge People By Their Attire?
In Chapter 42 of his Essays, Montaigne remarks that
We praise a horse for its strength and speed, not on account of its harness; a greyhound for its swiftness and not its collar; a hawk for its wing and not for its jesses and bells. Why then do we not value a man for what is his? . . . If you bargain over a horse, you remove its trappings, you see it bare and uncovered . . . . Why, when estimating a man, do you estimate him all wrapped and muffled up? . . . We must judge him by himself, not by his attire. (Tr. E. J. Trechmann)
I am tempted to agree by saying what I once said to my mother when she told me that clothes make the man, namely, that if clothes make the man, then the kind of man that clothes make is not the kind of man I want to be. (Women are undeniably more sensitive than men to the fact that the world runs on appearances. They have a deep intuitive understanding of the truth that the Germans express when they say, Der Schein regiert die Welt.)
But there is another side to the problem, one that the excellent Montaigne ignores. A horse does not choose its bit and harness, but has them imposed on it. A man, however, chooses how he will appear to his fellows, and so choosing makes a statement as to his values and disvalues. It follows that there is some justification in judging by externals. For the externals we choose, unlike the externals imposed on a horse, are defeasible indicators of what is internal. In the case of human beings, the external is not merely external: the external is also an expression of the internal. Our outer trappings express our attitudes and beliefs, our allegiances and alignments.
That being said, I remain a proud sartorial functionalist who pays no attention to what Thoreau’s "head monkey in Paris" is up to. Practicality and utility rule. Footwear, for example, must be such as to enable the climbing of a mountain should a mountain present itself to be climbed. Bandannas serve as handkerchiefs given their muti-utility for signalling, going incognito, protecting the nasal passages should one find oneself in the midst of an Arizona dust devil, stanching nosebleeds consequent upon overzealous cleaning operations, impeding circulation in case of snakebite . . . .
Pants in summer, that is, during seven months of the year in these parts, must be short to allow proper ventilation despite their ridiculous appearance. Belts must be sturdy enough to support a shootin’ ahrn. A shirt without pockets is worthless, and optimally comes equipped with two deep ones. One needs space for notebook, pen, compass, and what all else. Long ‘geek pants’ that are zipper-enabled for quick transmogrification into short pants are not looked at askance. And so on.
To allow fashion to dictate one's attire shows a lack of independence. Be a man, be yourself, and to hell with the Parisian head monkey.
Proud To Be a Human Being
It’s a hell of a thing to be a consciousness encased in flesh and riding on a rickety skeleton. A precarious predicament, exposed as we are to the rude impacts of a physical universe that cannot even be called indifferent. A mere reed, but a thinking reed, an engineering reed. A reed who risks his hide to explore and to know.
In the westbound lane of U. S. 60 a huge tractor rig appears, escorted by police cars and hauling a long flat-bed trailer atop of which sits a monstrous turbine or reactor core. A surge of pride energizes me, a pride in belonging to a species of animal that envisages and implements great projects. I am reminded of the exhiliration I felt as a man of twenty two returning from a six month European sojourn. As we took off from London’s Heathrow, I glanced out at the wings and the jet engines and contemplated the audacity of essaying to ride through the air on a controlled explosion.
How pusillanimous and shortsighted, therefore, those who balk at space exploration. Have they stopped to consider what ‘satellite TV’ means? Are they aware of how those communication satellites were placed in their geosynchronous orbits? Do they think that money spent on a Mars expedition would be wasted and better spent on terrestrial needs? That’s an illusory way of thinking.
Had all the time and money spent on pure research and exploration over the centuries been spent on alleviating immediate needs we would have none of the technological wherewithal with which we most marvelously and most efficiently — alleviate our immediate needs.
Fake Halloween Tombstones and the Brevity of Life
A neighbor's fake halloween tombstone bore the inscription:
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Life is short
So party we must.
But why not:
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Life is short
So work out your salvation with diligence!
Continue reading “Fake Halloween Tombstones and the Brevity of Life”
The Human Predicament: Not to be Taken Too Seriously
I've been loved, hated, feared, loathed, respected, scorned, unjustly maligned, praised for what I should not have been praised for, lionized, demonized, put on a pedestal, dragged through the mud, understood, misunderstood, ill-understood, well-understood, ignored, fawned upon, admired, envied, tolerated, and found intolerable. And the same most likely goes for you.
Continue reading “The Human Predicament: Not to be Taken Too Seriously”
Superman: The Moral of the Story
George Reeves (1914-1959) was the original 'Superman.' You know the character: "Faster than a speeding bullet . . . ." Reeves was murdered (or was it suicide?) in June of 1959. I remember a comment of my Uncle Ray at the time of Reeves' death: "He could stop other people's bullets, but not his own."
I hope Reeves won't mind it too much if I take moral instruction from the mistakes that killed him. It has long been my policy to let others pay my tuition at the School of Hard Knocks.
Reeves succumbed to sex, booze, and career-identification. It is hard enough to get the sex monkey off your back, but if you allow him to form a tag-team with the booze monkey you have double trouble. But of course I would never say that he was 'addicted' to these two 'monkeys': I believe in free will, self-discipline, self-reliance, and in strengthening one's will by exercising it. With respect to temptations, a good maxim is this: Resistance strengthens; indulgence weakens. And if you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal.
After his first wife left him, he became involved with two women, sequentially, both of whom had it in them to kill him because of jealousy vis-à-vis the other. The Bard hath said it well, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Reeves left the first for the second, but near the end was about to return to the first. Both were loose-living, hard-drinking, party animals, especially the second to whom he was drawn like a moth to the flame.
Alcohol fueled the fires of his delusion. Near the end he had become a full-time boozer. Hopelessly type-cast, his career was at an end.
The moral of the story: sex, booze, and worldly ambition are of the devil. But how attractive they are! And how seemingly flat, stale, and boring the life of 'moral virtue.' And as every leftist 'knows,' morality is but bourgeois ideology and all moral striving but hypocritical posturing.
Evil appears warm and inviting; good, cold and forbidding. Evil seems fascinating and lively; good, boring and dead. Such is the world — in which reality is illusion and illusion reality.