"Contemplation for an hour is better than formal worship for sixty years." (Paul Brunton, Notebooks vol. 15, Part I, p. 171, #16)
Brunton gives no source. Whatever the source, and whether or not Muhammad said it, it is true. Aquinas would agree. The ultimate goal of human existence for the doctor angelicus is the visio beata. The Beatific Vision is not formal worship but contemplation.
Islam may be the "saddest and poorest form of theism" as Schopenhauer says, and in its implementation more a scourge upon humanity than a boon, but it does have genuine religious value. I would also add that for the benighted tribesmen whose religion it is it is better than no religion at all.
That last sentence is not obvious and if you disagree you may be able to marshal some good reasons.
Why do I say that Islam for certain peoples is better than no religion at all? Because religion tames, civilizes, and teaches morality; it gives life structure and sense. Religion imparts morality in an effective way, even if the morality it imparts is inferior. You can't effectively impart morality to an 18-year-old at a university via ethics courses. Those courses come too late; morality needs to be inculcated early. (Reflect on the etymology of 'inculcate' and you will appreciate that it is exactly the right word.) And then, after the stamping-in early on, ethical reflection has something to chew on. Same with logic: logic courses are wasted on illogical people: one must already have acquired basic reasoning skills in concrete situations if there is to be anything for logical theory to 'chew on.'
Now this from the Scowl of Minerva:
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, tr. E. F. J. Payne, vol. II (Dover, 1966), p. 162. This is from Chapter XVII, "On Man's Need for Metaphysics" (emphases added and a paragraph break):
Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all countries and ages, in their splendour and spaciousness, testify to man's need for metaphysics, a need strong and ineradicable, which follows close on the physical. The man of a satirical frame of mind could of course add that this need for metaphysics is a modest fellow content with meagre fare. Sometimes it lets itself be satisfied with clumsy fables and absurd fairy-tales. If only they are imprinted early enough, they are for man adequate explanations of his existence and supports for his morality.
Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need for countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value. Such things show that the capacity for metaphysics does not go hand in hand with the need for it . . . .
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). This is an axiological thesis. From it follows the deontic conclusion that "all procreation is wrong." (12)
Procreation is obviously a biological process. But in the case of humans, procreation is more than a merely biological process in that it leads to the production of extremely sensitive conscious and self-conscious individuals. Human procreation is an objective process in the world that leads to the production of subjects of experience for whom there is a world! If you don't find that astonishing, you are no philosopher. For as Plato taught, wonder is the feeling of the philosopher.
A Thought Experiment
Suppose one could keep (human) procreation going but that the offspring were no longer conscious. The offspring would react to stimuli and initiate chains of causation but have no conscious experiences whatsoever. It is conceivable that all biological processes including all the ones involved in procreation transpire 'in the dark.'
The idea is that at some point procreation becomes the procreation of genetically human zombies, as philosophers use the term 'zombie.' This is a learned usage, not a vulgar one.
A human zombie is a living being that is physically and behaviorally exactly like a living human being except that it lacks (phenomenal) consciousness. Cut a zombie open, and you find exactly what you would find were you to cut a human being open. And in terms of linguistic and non-linguistic behavior, there is no way to tell a human being from a zombie. (So don't think of something sleepy, or drugged, or comatose or Halloweenish.)
When a zombie sees a tree, what is going on in the zombie's brain is a 'visual' computational process, but the zombie lacks what a French philosopher would call interiority. There is no irreducible subjectivity, no irreducible intentionality, no qualitative feel to the 'visual' processing; there is nothing it is like for a zombie to see a female zombie or to desire her. (What's it like to be a zombie? There is nothing it is like to be a zombie.) I suspect that Daniel Dennett is a zombie. But I have and can have no evidence for this suspicion. His denial of qualia is not evidence. It might just be evidence of his being a sophist. More to the point, his linguistic behavior and facial expressions could be just the same as those of a non-zombie qualia-denier.
Zombies are surely conceivable whether or not they are possible. (We are conceiving them right now.) But if they are conceivable then it is conceivable that, starting tomorrow, human procreation proceed as usual except 'in the dark.' It is conceivable that future human offspring lack all sentience and higher forms of consciousness.
On this scenario it might still be the case that it would have been better had we non-zombies never have been born, but it would not be the case that a convincing quality-of-life case could be made that "it would be better if there were no more humans" (David Benatar and David Wasserman, Debating Procreation, Oxford UP 2015, 13). For without consciousness, human life is devoid of felt quality. No consciousness, no qualia. Without consciousness there is no suffering mental or physical or spiritual. And without these negatives, what becomes of the anti-natalist argument?
What my thought experiment seems to show is that what is problematic about human life is the consciousness associated with it, not life itself viewed objectively and biologically. If so, it is not the value of life that we question, but the value of consciousness. So the problem is not that we were born (or conceived) but that we became conscious.
The Original Calamity?
If a philosopher can't speculate, who the hell can speculate? Could it be that the Original Calamity, the Fall of Man if you will, repeated in each one of us is the arisal of consciousness? Or perhaps the calamity is not the arisal of consciousness from the slime and stench of life, bottom up, but the entanglement of consciousness in the flesh, top down. Either way, embodied consciousness is the problem. This is a thought I had when I was 20 or so but lacked the 'chops' to articulate.
The question now shifts to why the value of consciousness is in doubt. Presumably consciousness is bad because of its objects and contents, not because it itself is bad. Being conscious, as such, is presumably good. But consciousness — this side of enlightenment — is never without an (intentional) object or a (non-intentional) content.
If consciousness were a pure beholding, a pure spectatorship, then perhaps consciousness would be an unalloyed good. Schopenhauer says that the world is beautiful to behold but terrible to be a part of. Things wouldn't be so bad if the beholding were transcendental to the world. But it is not: it is incarnated in the world. Every beholding is a situated beholding. I am not a merely a transcendental spectator; I am also a bloody bit of nature's charnel house. I am a prey to wolves human and non-human with all the mental and physical pain they bring, and prey to doubts about the sense and value of life with all the spiritual suffering they bring.
A Way Out?
If consciousness is contingently entangled in life, then there way be a way out, a path to salvation. Maybe there's a way to get clear of the samsaric crapstorm and step off of:
The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . . . . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven dead. ( Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues, 1959, 211th Chorus).
Here is an anti-natalist passage from Kerouac's Buddhist period. From Some of the Dharma, Viking 1997, p. 175, emphasis added:
No hangup on nature is going to solve anything — nature is bestial — desire for Eternal Life of the individual is bestial, is the final creature-longing — I say, Let us cease bestiality & go into the bright room of the mind realizing emptiness, and sit with the truth. And let no man be guilty, after this, Dec. 9 1954, of causing birth. — Let there be an end to birth, an end to life, and therefore an end to death. Let there be no more fairy tales and ghost stories around and about this. I don't advocate that everybody die, I only say everybody finish your lives in purity and solitude and gentleness and realization of the truth and be not the cause of any further birth and turning of the black wheel of death. Let then the animals take the hint, and then the insects, and all sentient beings in all one hundred directions of the One Hundred Thousand Chilicosms of Universes. Period.
Nature is the cause of all our suffering; joy is the reverse side of suffering. Instead of seducing women, control yourself and treat them like sisters; instead of seducing men, control yourself and treat them like brothers. For life is pitiful.
How do you know that your present inamorata is the right woman for the long haul?
Well, if she tells you that she can do better, then you know she isn't. When Brandeis girl said that to me years ago, I handed her her walking papers.
But if she says to you, "My hero!" and means it, then that is a defeasible indicator that you are into something good. In a couple of weeks we celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary.
The beauty of it is that you don't have to be particularly heroic. You only have to appear that way to her.
In a world of seemings, seeming, which is always seeming to someone, can take you quite a distance. On the other hand, seeming with no being behind it won't seem for long.
Progressive media bias is now a given. The present generation of journalists and reporters tends to believe that just conveying the news no longer offers ample venue for their unappreciated talents, celebrity status, and deserved political influence.
In fact, that’s one of the reasons Clinton cites for losing. Not Dewey, but the expectation that the immense campaign she’d planned for so many years would indeed succeed. She lost, she explains, as “the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win.” Say what?
Liberals love a victim and show no shame in posturing as victims themselves while nurturing their grievances. Perhaps Hillary and Kathy Griffin should get together for coffee.
Talk of 'cultural appropriation,' as knuckleheaded leftists use this phrase, is bullshit. But bullshit is the stock-in-trade of the divisive and destructive Left.
Finally, with all due respect and gratitude, give a listen to Robert Johnson.
………………
London Ed responds:
No problem with ‘cultural appropriation’, which is the way all culture has been transmitted for millennia. Note Robert Johnson wore a pin stripe suit. And played an instrument that originated in Spain.
Re Clapton:
(1) Guitar. Page captures nicely the quarter tones of the Delta Blues, see e.g. the opening bars of this. Clapton follows more closely the Western diatonic classical scale so it’s not authentic sounding blues for me.
(2) Voice. Johnson sings from the dark depths of the soul e.g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A 0.55 onwards ‘standin at the crossroads, tryin to flag a ride .. aint nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by’. Compare Crapton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtLhPeLB9bA on the same verse around 1.10. Elevator music. Particularly ‘everybody pass me by’ which somewhat lacks the despairing alienated spirit of Johnson’s version, no?
BV: Ed touches on an interesting set of questions that I don't have time to tackle at the moment. But just to add to the data set: Charles Adnopoz, Robert Zimmerman, Michael Bloomfield. Three Jews from comfortable backgrounds who sought authenticity in the music of the down and out and dispossessed.
Admittedly, Clapton is not singing from the dark depths of a tormented soul. And if you saw Clapton at a crossroads flagging a ride, you'd pick him up for sure; if you saw someone who looked like Robert Johnson, though, you'd probably pass him by.
Bob Dylan finally gave his Nobel Prize for Literature lecture. I'm impressed. Besides his musical he mentions his literary influences. He cites many of the books I read as assigned readings in high school, books he claims to have read as assigned readings in grammar school! I'm talking about some serious tomes: Moby Dick, Ivanhoe, A Tale of Two Cities, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and others.
Audio here. Dylan's comments on Moby Dick are from 6:27-12:30.
A BBC article with some of the text. Full text at first link above.
They perceive ours as a candle-and-teddy-bear society . . . We kill, you light candles.
And so acts of terrorism are not expressions of nihilism or desperation, but reasonable, methodical steps to topple a society that has become too weak and decadent to have the will to defend itself even though it has the means to defend itself.
Next stop: dhimmitude.
Am I wrong? I hope so!
And I hope we Amis learn something from the feckless Brits.
Had enough yet? If not, here is Heather Mac's latest.
Paul Brunton, Notebooks, vol. 15, Part II, p. 76, #316:
He will maintain a proper equilibrium between being aware of what is happening in the world, remaining in touch with it, and being imperturbable towards it, inwardly unaffected and inwardly detached from it.
Small is the number of those who can appreciate this as an ideal, and smaller still those capable of attaining it. Smallest of all is the number of those who attain it.
The Brits may want to rethink their gun laws in the light of recent events.
Katie Hopkins lays into Sadiq Khan, mayor of London.
Keep calm and carry on? Keep calm, and carry one!
By the way, are there any cities or towns in Muslim countries that have Christian or non-Muslim mayors or other government officials? Just asking!
Should we tolerate the intolerant? Should we, in the words of Leszek Kolakowski,
. . . tolerate political or religious movements which are hostile to tolerance and seek to destroy all the mechanisms which protect it, totalitarian movements which aim to impose their own despotic regime? Such movements may not be dangerous as long as they are small; then they can be tolerated. But when they expand and increase in strength, they must be tolerated, for by then they are invincible, and in the end an entire society can fall victim to the worst sort of tyranny. Thus it is that unlimited tolerance turns against itself and destroys the conditions of its own existence. (Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal, p. 39.)
Read that final sentence again, and again. And apply it to current events.
Kolakowski concludes that "movements which aim to destroy freedom should not be tolerated or granted the protection of law . . . " (Ibid.) and surely he is right about this. Toleration has limits. It does not enjoin suicide.
"This website publishes the latest contents from philosophy journals around the world."
Anecdote. When I taught at Boston College in the '70s I had a nursing student in one of my classes. One day I made mention of a philosophy journal. Sweet Darci said, "You mean they have journals of this stuff?"
