If you downplay your wins, downplay your losses. The pain of defeat is worse than the pleasure of victory is good. But you have the power to regard them as equal. In some measure the pain of loss can be lessened. The Stoic therapy is no cure, but it is a palliative. If our predicament is a splitting headache, said therapy is a couple of aspirin. Take it and them for what they are worth.
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Downplay Both
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When Vocabulary Contracts . . .
. . . thought contracts with it.
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With Detachment from the Outcome
There are games and there is life, and life is not a game. But life is like a game, and sufficiently so to warrant application of the same principle: play hard, but with detachment from the outcome.
In chess, and not just in chess, it is 'unsporting' not to try to defeat the opponent by all legal means. It shows a lack of respect for the opponent and for the game to not do one's best.
In life as in chess, play hard, but with detachment from the outcome.
If the above reminds you of the Bhagavad Gita, that's a feather in your cap.
Related: Coitus Reservatus and Beyond
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True Community
A true community is made of and by individuals, and individuals are made by solitude. True community is as much a task as self-individuation.
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Technical Philosophy, Compartmentalization, and Worldview
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Crime and ‘Equity’
On Biden's watch, crime is surging. It is easy to see why. For the 'woke' Left, the achieving of 'equity' is a high if not the highest desideratum. 'Equity' is wokespeak for equality of outcome. To achieve 'equity' in apprehension, prosecution, sentencing, and incarceration of blacks as compared to whites, given the much greater criminality of blacks as compared to whites and Asians, certain 'reforms' have to be made, including the elimination of cash bail. Standards have to be lowered to the point where blacks become the equals of whites and Asians with respect to such outcomes as apprehension, prosecution, sentencing, incarceration, and the like. The lowering of standards naturally brings more crime of all sorts.If you believe that the upsurge of crime is a price that has to be paid to achieve the lofty goal of 'equity,' then I recommend that you continue to vote Democrat.
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If God is Simple, How can the World be Contingent?
This entry is an offshoot of the earlier discussion of classical theism and its difference from theistic personalism. These labels have the meaning here than they had in that earlier discussion. Classical theism is committed to all three of the following:
1) God is simple.
2) God freely created the world in the libertarian 'could have done otherwise' sense.
3) There is no absolute necessity that God create our world or any world.
Theistic personalists hold that these three propositions are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. If they are logically inconsistent, then at least one of them must be either rejected or modified. The theistic personalist will reject (1) on the ground that God is a person and that no person is simple. This the classical theist will refuse to do on the basis of reasons he finds compelling. So refusing, he must find a way to turn aside the accusation of inconsistency.
Well, why should the triad be thought inconsistent? Here's why. If God is simple, then he is purely actual. If purely actual, then he harbors no potencies or unrealized powers. His power, which is manifested in his creating of the world (the totality of creatures), could then not have gone unrealized. He could not have refrained from creating. If so, his power to create had to be realized, in which case God's creating of the world (the totality of created items) is necessary, not contingent. It is the necessary action of a necessarily existent agent, and is thus absolutely, as opposed to conditionally necessary. But then it follows that the world exists necessarily and not contingently. This is a consequence that cannot be countenanced by the classical theist. For it conflicts with the divine aseity which is an entailment of the divine simplicity, which is a plank in the classical platform. If God is a se, then he is under no necessity to create. If God is a se, then he is wholly self-sufficient and fully actual whether or not he creates anything.
Can this reasoning be evaded? I will conclude this entry by considering and rejecting one evasive stratagem. Nathan Greeley writes,
. . . to say that God's activity of knowing and willing exist necessarily is not to say that created objects of his knowing and willing must also exist necessarily. As long as these created objects are considered really distinct from the acts by which they are known and willed, then the objects in themselves, need not have the same modal status as these acts. [. . .] God, one can then say, necessarily knows and necessarily wills in an absolute manner, but at least some of the particular objects of his knowledge are contingent. ("Divine Simplicity: A Reply to Philosophical Objections" in The Lord is One: Reclaiming Divine Simplicity, eds. Minich and Kamel, Davenant Press, 2019, p. 237, emphasis added.)
The idea here is that what God necessarily creates, and thus could not have failed to create, can nevertheless be contingent, i.e., possibly nonexistent. As far as I can see, there is only way this could be true. Suppose that God's creating of a thing simultaneously releases it into ontological independence. The divine creative act makes the thing exist, but once it exists, it exists on its own, 'by its own power' without divine assistance. In other words, when God creates a thing, he creates it in such a way that its existence, moment by moment, does not depend on God's ongoing creative sustenance after the initial creative action. If this is the nature of creation, then the created entity could very well be contingent despite the creative act's being necessary. For the created entity to exist in the first place it is necessary that God create it, but after he does so the entity exists contingently. On this scheme, there is creatio originans (originating creation), but no creatio continuans (continuing creation). This allows what is originally caused to exist to be contingent.
Unfortunately, this understanding of creation is foreign to classical theism. On classical theism, creation is both originating and continuing. What's more, classical theism need not insist on the reality of this distinction. For even if the world (the created realm) has an infinite past and always existed, it could nonetheless have creaturely status. If that were the case, then there would be no real distinction between originating and continuing creation. If, on the other hand, the world had a beginning in time, then, on classical theism, it still needs to be kept in being moment by moment.
I conclude that the stratagem proposed by Greeley above does not allow the proponent of divine simplicity to evade the conclusion that, if the simple God creates, then the product of his creative act necessarily exists.
Next stop: modal collapse.
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Were They Always On?
Did Socrates or his Danish disciple ever just play the regular guy while out and about in the public square? Did they ever hide their true selves in a concession to their own all-too-human humanity and in recognition of a need to stay loosely tethered to the mundane for the sake of sanity?
Or were they always on, examining their companions, playing the midwife, drawing them out, e-ducating and e-ducing, ever birthing a flame of inwardness in those lost in the diaspora of the sensual and the conventional? The same question could be asked about Jesus Christ.
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Can Evil be Eradicated?
Not by our own effort, as I argue at Substack.
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Saul Kripke (1940-2022)
We honor a philosopher best by re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically, but critically. Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas.
Here are a couple of entries from my Kripke category:
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A Secret Plan to Destroy America
Malcolm Pollack recommends the following. I've reproduced it verbatim. It is that good.
………………………….
Democrat and former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm gave the following speech in Washington, DC in 2003. Originally published on CAIRCO in 2014.
I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white bread, too self-satisfied, too rich, let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and they all fall, and that “an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.” Here is my plan:
1. We must first make America a bilingual-bicultural country. History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. One scholar, Seymour Martin Lipset, put it this way: “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”
2. I would then invent “multiculturalism” and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal: that there are no cultural differences that are important. I would declare it an article of faith that the black and Hispanic dropout rate is only due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out-of-bounds.
3. We can make the United States a “Hispanic Quebec” without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently, “The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved, not by tolerance, but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically, and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.” I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with a salad bowl metaphor. It is important to insure that we have various cultural sub-groups living in America reinforcing their differences, rather than Americans emphasizing their similarities.
4. Having done all this, I would make our fastest-growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50 percent dropout rate from school.
5. I would then get the big foundations and big business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of victimology. I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was all the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.
6. I would establish dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would “celebrate diversity.” “Diversity” is a wonderfully seductive word. It stresses differences rather than commonalities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other – that is, when they are not killing each other. A “diverse,” peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together, and we can take advantage of this myopia.
Look at the ancient Greeks. Dorf’s “World History” tells us: “The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic Games in honor of Zeus, and all Greeks venerated the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty. Yet, all of these bonds together were not strong enough to overcome two factors … (local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions …)” If we can put the emphasis on the “pluribus,” instead of the “unum,” we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo.
7. Then I would place all these subjects off-limits – make it taboo to talk about. I would find a word similar to “heretic” in the 16th century that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like “racist”, “xenophobe” halt argument and conversation. Having made America a bilingual-bicultural country, having established multiculturalism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of “victimology,” I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra – ”because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good.” I would make every individual immigrant sympatric and ignore the cumulative impact.
8. Lastly, I would censor Victor Davis Hanson’s book “Mexifornia” – this book is dangerous; it exposes my plan to destroy America. So please, please – if you feel that America deserves to be destroyed–please, please – don’t buy this book! This guy is on to my plan.
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Is There a Problem with Conservative Nationalism?
I have advocated an American conservatism that includes what I call enlightened nationalism.
But this morning's mail brought notice of an article that decouples conservatism from nationalism. Brion McClanahan writes:
What is “American conservatism”?
[. . .]
But I know one thing that American conservatism is not: nationalism.
That hasn’t stopped modern American “conservatives” for hopping on that train.
Trump bought a ticket and rode it to success in 2016.
[. . .]
In fact, most American “conservatives” have long identified with decentralization, not nationalism.
For example, John C. Calhoun described himself as a “conservative,” and because he was a “conservative” he was a “State’s rights man.”
Translation: that means he wasn’t an American “nationalist.” He was a “Unionist” but never a “nationalist” because Calhoun understood that an American “nation” by a traditional definition never existed.
Here, as elsewhere, much depends on the definition of terms. McClanahan does not inform us as to the "traditional definition" of nationalism. I am all for decentralization, limited government, states' rights, and the Tenth Amendment. Why should anyone think that these are incompatible with enlightened nationalism as I defined it (link above) in broad agreement with Trump's America Firstism?
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Beware of Projecting . . .
. . . your values and attitudes into others. We are not all the same 'deep down,' and we don't all want the same things. You say you value peace and social harmony? So do I. But some are bellicose right out of the box. They love war and thrive on conflict, and not just verbally.
It is dangerous to assume that others are like we are. (I am thinking right now of a very loving and lovable female neighbor who makes the dangerous assumption: she has a 'Coexist' sticker affixed to her bumper.)
Liberal 'projectionism' — to give it a name — can get your irenic self killed.
As desirable a desideratum as peaceful coexistence is, it is inconsistent with totalitarian systems. This is why communism and Christianity cannot coexist assuming that they remain true to their defining principles. (Or at least they cannot coexist in one geographical area over the long term.) They are mutually exclusive worldviews. And of course they are not just comprehensive views of the world and the people in it, but practical systems of prescriptions and proscriptions oriented toward the guidance of human action. The actional side is paramount in both systems. Old Karl said that the philosophers had variously interpreted the world when the point was to change it. (Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach). A serious Christian could say that the philosophers had variously theorized and speculated when the unum necessarium was the salvation of one's immortal soul. "For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?" (Matthew 16-26) A library of learned disquisitions on the nature of the soul is of no avail if one in the end suffers its loss.
Christianity and Islam are also quite obviously mutually exclusive on both doctrinal and practical planes. Note that both in their ideological purity are totalitarian. (Christianity in the West has of course been liberalized to a great extent and is thus no longer ideologically pure.) The two in their pure forms make a total claim on the lives of their adherents. They cannot peacefully coexist in the same geographical area over the long term. The Muslim says to the infidel: either convert to the truth faith, or accept dhimmitude, or be put to the sword. That, for a Christian, is indeed a trilemma: you will be impaled on one of three horns, but you are free to choose which one.
Can classical liberalism, the touchstone of which is toleration, coexist with any totalitarian ideology, religious or secular? No again. The classical liberal can and will tolerate any ideology as long as it respects the principle of toleration; it cannot, however, tolerate the rejection of this very principle, the principle that defines it. The rub, for the totalitarian, is that if he accepts the principle of toleration, he can no longer remain totalitarian: he will have to adjust his tenets in various ways. Classical liberalism and totalitarian systems are mutually exclusive.
So where does this leave us? There can be no peaceful coexistence in one and the same geographical area over the long term except under classical liberalism. For classical liberalism alone is tolerant of deep differences and is alone respectful of our equally deep ignorance of the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. Why must we be tolerant? Because we do not know. The classical liberal is keenly aware of the evil in the human heart and of the necessity of limited government and dispersed power. So he is justified in making war against fanaticism, onesidedness, and totalitarian systems of government whether theocratic or 'leftocratic.' It would not be a war of extermination but one of limitation. It would also be limited to one's geographical area and not promoted abroad to impose the values of classical liberalism on the benighted tribalists of the Middle East and elsewhere.
Finally, can American conservatism and the ideology of the Democrat Party in its contemporary incarnation peacefully coexist? Obviously not, which is why there is a battle for the soul of America. Either we defeat the totalitarian Left or we face a nasty trilemmatic trident: acquiesce and convert; or accept dhimmitude; or ne cancelled in one livelihood and then eventually in one's life.
It’s unbelievable that people who work with the law are among the ranks of the most sophists, demagogues, and irrational…