Society's Foundation

Kavaphes's Waiting for the Barbarians is a remarkably simple poem that contains great irony in its brief stanzas. It is set in Rome or some similar, educated society. It speaks of barbarians who are supposedly coming to visit. ("What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are to arrive today.") The governing officials plan to accept them with gifts and such to promote peace between the two groups. ("And the emperor waits to receive their chief. Indeed he has prepared to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed many titles and names of honor.") 

These barbarians refer to uneducated, different people who supposedly threaten the educated society. That is why the governing officials are receiving them and giving them accolades. Throughout, the poem makes note of the shaky goodness of political rituals. ("Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out today in their red, embroidered togas; why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets, and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds; why are they carrying costly canes today, wonderfully carved with silver and gold?") It also condescends the practices of the barbarians- for example the judgement that they find orators boring. ("Because the barbarians are to arrive today; and they get bored with eloquence and orations") At the end, it is realized that there are no barbarians. ("Because night is here but the barbarians have not come. And some people arrived from the borders, and said that there are no longer any barbarians.") This leads to a realization. No longer are there primitive "threats" to the society. Every society needs an enemy to compare itself to, and without one, members of that society are forced to examine themselves. ("And now what shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were some kind of solution.") The question is, who really are the barbarians? This forces the reader to look at the structure and ritual of his own society and look for the reason and justice of it. 

The central message of the poem is basically that every society is predicated on certain principles and practices that are thought to be better than those of other societies. This rings true even today when many modernists believe that technological advancement and implementation will be the world's savior and that societies without them are primitive. This is not necessarily the case. What is ideal, or just, or beneficial is not found through comparison. We cannot simply examine our society in relation to that of those we consider barbarians. We must examine our societies by their own merits. Otherwise, as the poet's question asks, "What will become of us?" 

Wisdom and Its Wicked Brother

This is a blog-post I made for school. It is a brief analysis of the shirt story The Bet by Chekhov:

Anton Chekhov's The Bet is a very poignant story that inspires the deepest sort of thinking. The story features several lawyers, one of which is of full-age and rich, and another of which is young and naive. During a discussion on the morality of capital punishment, the older banker bets the younger one 2 million dollars that he cannot live in solitary confinement for an extended period of time. The young man accepts the bet and lives in a small dwelling with one window, a musical instrument, books, wine, and tobacco for a set duration of 15 years. In this time his tastes, moods, and motivations change quite dramatically. In his solitude, he thinks a great deal and gains much of what he calls wisdom. He studies literature, philosophy, theology, foreign language, and science. At the end of the 15 years he forfeits the bet because he no longer desires the money- the original motivation of the feat.

I found all of the questions in the reading guide rather boring. I feel there are deeper questions in the text than mere questions of comprehension. To circumnavigate the problem I am faced with (the problem of writing something meaningful while doing what I am "required" to do) I will answer the question, "Did you like the story?". My answer, yes I did and here's why.

The antagonist of the story is not the greedy old banker, it is nihilism. The struggle... the quest is overcoming the notion that life is meaningless. The prisoner is faced with this problem in his solitude as his naivete is taken from him and replaced with understanding. Ironically, with wisdom comes great confusion. We can answer the what and the when and the where and the how, but when we attempt to answer the why, our answers often seem quite inadequate. I wonder if the prisoner struggled with this in his confinement- if his preconceived notions of why we live were shattered by his wisdom.

Let us examine his progression...

Year 1: The prisoner is lonely and depressed. He plays the piano, writes, and reads shitty books.

Analysis: I'd wager that the prisoner was not yet cynical of life at this point. He agreed to the bet because of the money, and he spent his time trying to enjoy himself as much as possible. That is why he read novels of light character. Regardless of his attempts at happiness, he was very lonely and sad.

Year 2-4: The prisoner does little but read the classics.

Analysis: I think that the man noticed the central trends of humanity in his thoughts and pain and sought out the classics to reveal more of those trends and their nature's.

Year 5: The prisoner stops reading and plays music again. He drinks and eats and attempts to enjoy himself.

Analysis: After four years of study and pondering, I think that the man was tired of it all and simply wanted to try to enjoy the simple things of life. It also said that he wrote a lot. This betrays his desire to emulate the authors that he had been reading and write something himself. He apparently fails at this and rips up his writing.

Year 6-10: The prisoner reads philosophy, foreign language, and history.

Analysis: At this point, the prisoner's desire to study has returned and he desires to study philosophy. I think that history and foreign language are merely supplemental to these studies. History to understand man (anthropology of sorts) and foreign language to understand foreign authors. He seeks to quell his nihilism, the bitter companion of wisdom, with more knowledge. He hopes to find solace in the writings of men with problems similar to his own.

Year 11-13: The prisoner reads the Gospel and commentaries associated with it.

Analysis: I think this desire comes from the prisoner's questioning. He is looking for motivation and his de-facto motive was always Christianity. He seeks to justify that motive and he does so by rigorously studying the religion.

Year 14-15: The prisoner read indiscriminately.

Analysis: The prisoner is does not know what other studies to pursue and therefore reads indiscriminately. He has in many ways exhausted the volumes of human wisdom and is grasping for something with meaning.

The prisoner's conclusion: The man decided that he was wise because he had read so much about mankind and his various motivations, but in the end, he decided that he despised it all and loved his solitude. He had no love for the things that men strove for. He renounced the world and the money. What he does after he leaves the prison is completely unknown. The reader does not know whether or not the man found meaning.

Which brings us back to one of the major questions posited at the beginning of the story. Is it better to live in any state than it is to die, or as the prisoner put it prior to his imprisonment, "To live anyhow is better than not living at all!"

Can we assume that the prisoner still took this position at the end of the story when he had obtained wisdom and his battle with nihilism was crescendoing? I really don't think so. I think that he eventually committed suicide. What did he have to live for? He had exhausted the great literature and learning of the world and he had no desire to mingle with people. On what basis would he continue to live? That is a question that we must all answer for ourselves and its an incredibly important question to answer.

That is why I liked the story- because it makes clear the reality of the futility of life and inadvertently asks the reader to fixate on the reason that he or she lives. Few short stories are capable of that.

You MUST see Her

You should go watch Spike Jonze's Her. It was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I'll try to describe it.

I've seen a lot of films that attempt to capture romance. But Her was unlike anything I've ever seen before. For those of you who don't know, it's about a man who falls in love with his artificial intelligence device. And what a love it is... The protagonist essentially shows the world to the machine. He explains human nature to her, and what's beautiful about it is the way that she accepts it. She embraces it in the most pure way imaginable. When two humans bond in an intimate relationship (I don't mean sexual- I just mean VERY CLOSE) there is a definite pretense to it. Even if you love someone, the purity of that love is poisoned by doubt and judgement. As humans we understand each other and that understanding retracts from the intimacy that we're capable of.

However, the AI only understood that pretense conceptually. That is, she knew what it was, but there was no feeling associated with it. It was merely a note in her processor to allow her to function with humans. She could still grow with the protagonist and appreciate him for what he was- with all of his flaws, insecurities, evils, obsessions, and anxieties. The love that she had for him was so indescribably pure it brought tears to my eyes on multiple occasions.

Her broke barriers- it is art in its purest form. You MUST see it.

Morality, Objective or Subjective

There has been a lot of discussion on morality amongst my peers in the last several months. I thought it would be relevant to post this pseudo-debate I had with Hudson Petty on the matter. He was advocating objective morality and I was advocating relative morality.

Here's his argument...

It's really hard to form an argument for objective morality without simply begging the question, but I'll try my best.

1) If objective morality doesn't exist then no one is morally responsible for anything

2) If moral responsibility doesn't exist then any morality, subjective or otherwise, is illusory. That is, subjective morality has no foundation in reality.

3) Subjective morality is illusory and has no foundation in reality

4) In order for something to exist, it must have a foundation in reality

In support of premise one: I'll use this definition of moral responsibility, "Moral responsibility is the status of morally deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment for an act or omission, in accordance with one's moral obligations." If we adopt subjective morality then can we assign blame to a pedophile who rapes a child? My answer is no. The pedophile could have is own moral reasons for raping the child. Maybe he thinks children who are raped have to overcome adversity and this challenge makes them stronger, better human beings. In this way he could claim to be doing the child a favor as an act of morality. On subjective morality, it would be impossible to distinguish between the moral reasons for raping a child and the moral reasons for abstaining from child rape. Thus, we cannot assign praise or blame for moral decisions under subjective morality.

In support of premise two: Without moral responsibility any claim of morality is illusory. If we can't assign blame to the pedophile for raping the child, then any moral judgement of the pedophile is simply a fiction. That is, moral judgments have no foundation in reality. Thus, if moral responsibility doesn't exist then any morality, subjective or otherwise, is illusory.

In support of premise three: This is pretty simple. If all morality is illusory, then it follows that subjective morality is illusory.

In support of premise four: Reality is the only thing that exists. Therefore, anything that doesn't have a foundation in reality doesn't exist.

Thus, we are lead to the conclusion that subjective morality does not exist.

Here's my rebuttal of sorts:

I'll begin by defining my position on moral relativism. Meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in moral disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong. Note that this says nothing about the use of morality. I am not a normative moral relativist.

I'd now like to discuss is-ought inasmuch as it deals with much of the content of today's debate. You may rest assured in my understanding of it because I am currently reading the book from which it comes. In book three of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1739), the philosopher discusses the tendency of writers to make statements that propose what ought to be based upon what is.

Here's what he says: “In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.”

Hume was not particularly a moral relativist, but he did say that in order for ought statements to be made, one must appeal to an ethical principle. Being a Christian, Hume's ethics were related to Christianity. However, without the Christian faith, if we look at things without that supposition, morality appears relative. I will support this argument in today's debate. But first more Hume...

When combined with Hume's fork, the is-ought problem forms the relativist weapon Hume's Guillotine. The fork designates that knowledge either comes from logic and definitions or from observation. Hume concludes that morality can come from neither of these things.

This conclusion is reached in myriad of ways. I'll discuss a few of them. Firstly, the ambiguity of the outcomes associated with morality. Morality can be a cause and the effects of that cause can be numerous. What I mean to say is that morality can cause effects (which fit into is statements) that are dissimilar or incontiguous. Furthermore, effects can have multiple causes. These observations speak to the gap between is and ought statements in regards to logic and definition.

As for observations, observations function individually; therefore, moral judgments related to multiple people are of dubious validity. THAT is the argument of is-ought- that moral statements are generally of dubious morality.

I would now like to take this a step farther and advocate relative morality...

As for your first contention (which deals with responsibility). “If objective morality doesn't exist then no one is morally responsible for anything.” I think that this judgment, regardless of its truth-value, is largely inconsequential. There is no universal moral responsibility. Look at the world. Every act that you and I perceive as immoral is completed under the impression that said action is not immoral or even that said action must committed for one to be morally responsible (terror attacks). This paints a very ambiguous view of moral responsibility- a view that cannot be clarified using logic, definition, or observation (if Hume is upheld). It is not objective moral values that define what is right or wrong, but the unity of those with similar moralities (relative to each person) that make judgments as a body. Majority is the apex of morality's effectiveness.

This view translates well to your analogy of the pedophile. People can morally say that a pedophile is immoral. You are wrong in assuming otherwise. It is inconsequential whether or not the criminal thought he was morally justified because those around him think otherwise. The majority of people think that pedophilia is immoral; therefore, the pedophile cannot act on his morality without fearing serious consequences. This is where ethics come in handy. It is perfectly conceivable that a society could exist in which the majority thinks the contrary (that child-rape is permissible). This society would not violate any objective moral standards because they are nonexistent.

On a slightly separate note, I think that we must take into account the purpose of morality in this debate. I must ask how the objective moralist can say that some moral actions are wrong even if the entire populous agrees that they are not. For instance, if the Nazis had won WW2 and brainwashed the world into adhering to their moral views, objective moralists would typically say that what would've become a global morality would still be immoral. Of what purpose are said morals if people do not believe in them? Do they not become mere fluid ideas with no purpose? This is a question that you must answer in today's debate.

Back to the first contention, you are incorrect in saying that we cannot assign praise or blame to moral judgments if they are relative. “On subjective morality, it would be impossible to distinguish between the moral reasons for raping a child and the moral reasons for abstaining from child rape. Thus, we cannot assign praise or blame for moral decisions under subjective morality.” Majority distinguishes.

I think now is a good time for me to discuss the derivation of morality. It seems that it is human emotion that is the central human motivator. Even those motivated by logic do so because their emotions put them at relative ease in that decision. Hume thought that the passions are what decide morality (An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751)- this is essentially what I mean by emotion. We make decisions in general because our emotions tell us to do so. Our emotions are stimulated by our environments and the experiences that occur to each one of us. These factors are entirely individual. From that, I must insist that not only our moralities, but our epistemologies are entirely unique. Therefore, a moral consensus is impossible. But luckily, many people come have similar passions and similar emotions. This is why laws are easily made outlawing things like murder and child-rape- most people's passions tell them that such actions are immoral. Of course, there are exceptions, but majority reduces their influence.

Morality is a human decision that functions relative to individuals (relative morality). There is extensive evidence to uphold this (the above discussion for example). That morality is a transcendent concept that exists regardless of human decision (objective morality) is a shaky statement that has little basis. If there was justice in this world I may see otherwise, but there is not and I cannot. I must ask, what is the basis of objective morality? I would also like to hear some evidence for this basis. Also, faith won't cut it...

Onto your second contention... “If moral responsibility doesn't exist then any morality, subjective or otherwise, is illusory. That is, subjective morality has no foundation in reality.” This is simple. Relative moral judgments relate to reality. When any person moralizes their reasoning must relate to reality. People who moralize similarly then unite and implement their moral agendas. This is how the world works. Relative morality relates to reality, despite its fluidity.

I think your 3rd and 4th contentions have already been addressed. I would like to know why you keep distinguishing subjective morality from relative morality. Please define the two...

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Hudson never posted a rebuttal and the argument ended there. He felt that he could not answer many of my questions or rebut many of my points. If you are an objective moralist and feel you can, please comment. Thanks!

Suppression

Our culture must be the most depressed culture in history. I come to this conclusion because it seems that everyone is profoundly preoccupied with suppressing their emotions- with drinking, with drugs, with sexual exploits. And our diversions are not entirely confined to the vices typically associated with hedonism. Christianity is also a diversion. The spiritual adherents often seek religious bliss- a sort of ecstasy that they attribute to experiences with the supernatural. We are all so out of touch with our emotions. Why is this? Why do we try so hard to feel so little? It seems quite detrimental to the soul. Perhaps I'm just speaking to myself. But when I see the preoccupations of those around me, I must ask myself why said activities are meaningful. How do activities like drinking and dancing and social conventions and video games and sports and television touch the soul. If they do, should they? Should we alter our souls' bents? Or should we pursue what we deem as meaningful simply by the virtue that they're meaningful to us?