Sometimes bipolar depression acts like a reset button, so I stopped
working on writing for a few days and have been slowly adding back work
(maybe not coincidental with the situation in the next paragraph --
sometimes I "overclock" my brain or something like that). One thing
I realized was that I should focus more on music. I have some songs
that I want to record. Music is a lot harder for me than writing, in
terms of what it takes to make a single unit of finished work.
One day, I released three posts in one day. The process of releasing
a post is somewhat labor-intensive, because I have to edit them to a point
where I feel okay releasing them, before I release them. So maybe I
did too much in one day and messed one of them up somewhat. That's why
I added a note about that in that post.
I'm not sure whether I like how the word "depraved" is loaded, but
I do think the question of "how naturally or fundamentally evil are
people?" is an important one, and I guess "depravity" is how that's
talked about in Christian theology.
How "depraved" are people?
I don't think reality makes a lot of
sense if people have zero moral agency, no ability to make choices
morally. (Moral free will is why there is unbearable suffering, as
far as I can tell.) So I don't think people can be 100% predisposed
to evil, otherwise they wouldn't be the evil ones, but rather
that predisposition, or, originally, the being or beings that
predisposed them so. I guess it's possible for it to be the case
that suffering is permitted for the sake of other beings who have
free will, other than humans. Then, perhaps, humans could be 100%
predisposed toward evil -- but I think really humans just wouldn't
exist as persons, and only as appendages of the body of the being
that used them for evil.
On some level, I know myself, and can't
be wrong about myself, having privileged access to myself,
and I make decisions sometimes. They may be constrained by
the options available, but I choose. I know that I affirm the good,
and chafe at evil. Sometimes I fail to deeply oppose evil, or
perhaps even like it, and that comes from the real me. Perhaps I
am not in touch with decisions I have made (and likely will make)
that go against my affirmation or chafing in the moment, and my
whole person is not as affirming of the good, or inclined to chafe
against evil, as I feel, but in the moment, with that little piece
of me that is alive right then, I do affirm, or chafe, out of the
I that is saying "I affirm good" or "I chafe at evil". My will is
free, most of my waking life, though it may have limited options
and efficacy.
In some moments I find myself doing things that I don't
want to do, automatically, and being tempted by forces that I
didn't choose to put into my thought-life, which put me in positions
where my behavior is relatively far from what I would do if I were left
in the most favorable situations. Part of my human nature is
my body, the flesh of my brain, and it paints a picture of me
to others and even myself which is not always accurate, through
my behavior. It distorts the signal I'm really trying to send
to others, and I can even take it to be who I am when it is
a distortion, and not a trustworthy image of my real intentions.
Human behavior is somewhat naturally depraved,
because our brains are programmed to sometimes be aggressive,
hypersexual, manipulative, controlling, etc. But humans are not
exactly the same as their behavior. Human behavior is often
naturally whatever we would call the opposite of "depraved". And
again, humans are not exactly the same as their behavior.
Where does this extra-human depravity come from? We don't choose
it. Does God choose it? Why would God choose it? I don't think
God could choose it. So who chose it? Presumably it came through
the power of Satan. Satan wills that
we have these aggressive, hypersexual, manipulative, controlling,
etc. psychological natures. If Satan's will no longer prevails, then
they go away. Psychopathy seemingly follows from genes. If these
genes, and their phenotypes, are healed, then those who seem to
be, from a behavioral point of view, moral monsters, may turn out
to be merely humanly depraved. It's possible for someone
to freely choose to be a psychopath, but perhaps in many or even
most cases, people are psychopathic apart from any decision they
made.
What do humanly depraved people look like? Someone like Tim
Keller (whom I am using here as a name for a sincere, thoughtful,
and kind Calvinist) would say "like me -- at my best". These
are the horrific depths of human depravity, apart from the interference
of Satan. It may sound like I'm making a joke at the expense of
Calvinism, but I see an important truth in that view, which is
that it's dangerous to assume you are no longer evil in any
significant way, like your evil side could be rounded down to zero
in your eyes, even if you are as mild-mannered as Tim Keller. We
are tempted to view human nature through the lens of how bad Satan
makes us, and how good God makes us, the behavior and outward
appearance of us, and not our hearts which really choose.
I think that people are programmed or possessed both to be
good and to be evil, and in their freedom, really are both good
and evil, until they (we?) finish fully choosing the good. (Or
choose to be evil sufficiently firmly to prevent them (us?)
from fully choosing the good.)
The first Indonesian song I'm aware of having heard was a MIDI of
"Es Lilin". I was really impressed by it, mainly by an instrumental
line that maybe was composed by the MIDI programmer. Or maybe they
got it from someone's rendition. "Es Lilin" (I think) is a traditional
song. It's about a popsicle -- a poetic translation of "es lilin" is
"ice candle", but that's the word for "popsicle". I don't know what else
the song is about, but I intend to try to translate the lyrics if I
can, and discuss them in the follow-up to this post.
(I used to listen to MIDIs back at a certain era of my life, which
was when we only had dial-up at home and I didn't have money to buy
very many CDs, junior high or early high school. I didn't want to
pirate music.)
I took a gamelan class in college of which I absorbed fairly
little, although I do play a mallet percussion instrument and there
are a lot of metallophones in gamelan. I remember the instructor,
who I think was a fan of Indonesia, mentioning something about "Es
Lilin".
When I became interested in Indonesia a few months ago, I thought
to look up "Es Lilin". The versions I found didn't have the instrumental
part that had stood out to me when I was younger. But it's still a good
song. Here is Nining Meida's rendition, from her album
Kalangkang:
"Kalangkang", the title track on that album, to me sounds like a darkly
mysterious song. "Dark" can have different meanings in aesthetics. There's
"depressing" dark, "horror" dark, "evil" dark, "sad" dark, probably
others -- these being the Western dark vibes, to be found in goth and
metal among other places. But in Asia, there are other dark vibes,
in addition: "midnight" dark (like with midnight ragas), and ... whatever
is going on in "Kalangkang". I don't feel like Asia's dark vibes are
as close to "I'm going to die or have my being violated by evil" as
the Western dark vibes. I'm not sure exactly what "midnight" means in
all of Indian or Southeast Asian music, so they might include what I see in
midnight, but I see there "presence before God", "quiet", "being in
emotion", "being by yourself", "being outside of time". (Incidentally,
I think Jewish music has its own take on midnight which I think includes
"presence before God", at least I hear that in this
song, at some points.) "Kalangkang"'s "verse" sounds like an invitation to a
mystery -- but that's not having any idea what the lyrics are about.
Another song from Kalangkang is "Anjeun". I translated
a few words from "Anjeun" that I remember. The title means "you".
Indonesia has a lot of languages, and Indonesian is mostly a second
language for Indonesians. They first learn a language native to whatever
ethnic group they are part of. Some, or all, of Kalangkang
is in Sundanese. (Fortunately there is an
online translator for Sundanese.)
I suspect that "Anjeun" is a very sweet love song. I would normally
find such sweetness hard to take, at least from Western songs. And I
wonder if Indonesians find "Anjeun" to be too sweet. But to me it
sounds innocent-enough to have in it the sweetness. Or perhaps "uncandylike"
enough -- like it's sweet but not sugary. I don't know if that
impression will survive a translation of the lyrics.
A karaoke version.
Speaking of love songs, while looking around random pages on
Indonesian Wikipedia, I found the
page for Efek Rumah Kaca ("C" is pronounced "tsh" in Indonesian, and
I think maybe in all Indonesian languages). They made a song called
"Cinta Melulu" which means "Only Love" / "Always Love". I was interested
in it because on the English
Wikipedia page for the band, it sounded like it was about how the
Indonesian music scene/industry was being overwhelmed with love songs,
as though somehow Indonesia was not a place already overwhelmed with love
songs. But then I tried translating the lyrics and it made me think that
ERK was really lamenting that there were too many bad love songs. And
checking the source for the English Wikipedia page, it looks like that's
what was really meant by that source.
Thinking of Indonesia as a place where for some reason they didn't
have very many love songs, and "now" (in early 2000s, when "Cinta
Melulu" was written), there was a trend toward them, made me think
"is this evidence of a Westernization of Indonesian culture? We were
overwhelmed by love songs back in the 1960s". I do see evidence of
Westernization in Indonesian music -- Sundanese pop like Nining
Meida does sound like a mix between Western pop (most obviously in the
production) and traditional Asian music, and ERK sounds even more
like Western music and even less like traditional Asian music, at
least in "Cinta Melulu". But no, as I think about it, I'm going
to guess that Indonesia has had love songs for a long time, like as
far back as the 1980s when Nining Meida was making Kalangkang.
It could turn out that "Es Lilin" is a love song and not a
childhood song.
I think I wish that cultures could be radically different from my
own, and in my naivety I could suppose that different cultures in
the world were radically different from my own. I know that love
in some form is part of I would assume every non-monastic culture,
and monks and nuns were first children as part of the world of family at
least to some extent, but while the basics of human existence have
to be just about or exactly the same everywhere, we don't have to
talk about all of those basic phenomena. The world of what we talk
about, about what we choose to bring up, examine, celebrate, meditate
on, be horrified by, protest, etc. is to some extent up to us.
A culture that
talks about everything literally as it observes it might tend
toward so-called "Western" culture.
(Not so much "literal" in a
"scientific" / possibly
Humean or phenomenological way where we dissect our experiences
and see them in a non-personal way -- as "pure" objects apart from
us -- because that's not how we observe things most of the time;
but more in a naive, lived life, firsthand way, as we experience / observe things. I guess
this "literal" is one which is like seeing everything on your desk
that's in front of you (no microscope needed, no rifling through
the pages of closed books), or every emotion that goes through you (not
scrutinizing them, nor even letting them pass by you in a "mindful" way,
if they really are your emotions and part of you),
or develops takes on the subjects raised by each day's experience
(naive takes, or if you really feel like it, sophisticated ones);
without passing over an object on the desk, or an emotion that
passes through you, or a day's experience in your life. I guess
like with how reason evolves out of rigorous common sense, this
"literal" observantness of "seeing everything on your desk" could
turn into something philosophical (Humean, phenomenological, etc.). But
there's a difference between more rigorously or even extremely
scientific observation of the level of Hume or Husserl, and
proto-scientific observation, and while there is probably a
continuum between the two (I assume that, not having thought
this through), there might be a clear difference between the two,
like that between a puddle and a lake which is big enough to
have waves.)
I find
persuasive, whether I should or not, Scott Alexander's observation
that what we call Western culture in terms of "Westernization" is
really not inherently Western and is more like "appetite-following
culture" or "hewing-to-individual-biology culture", which simply
first emerged in the West. (This idea, or something like it, from his
How The West Was Won.) So
then if you just say how you're feeling, literally how you feel
it, you're not keeping people's minds away from your appetites,
which are presumably theirs as well. "I've got appetites" --
"those are my appetites too!" -- "Yes, appetites". Whereas a
traditional culture can push against individual appetites, and
through some form of censorship can make itself unique. I think
in our American "Western" culture we still have lots of
non-literalness and lots of censorship, but it comes from social
pressure or maybe low-level authoritarianism, and not from a more
monolithic presence, like an official religion or totalitarian
government. ("Censorship" is a harsh word, like total bans, but
there can be a softer version which is more like turning the volume
up or down, maybe a lot, on some strain of culture.)
Maybe "hewing-to-invididual-biology" ends up being a kind of censorship
of its own, causing us, when we look at our "desk" when we want to write
songs, to mostly only see the things relating to courtship and mating, or
overrepresent those, leaving out some others.
So maybe I was hoping that the censoring of reality (or the
"artistic thematization", to pick a less loaded word than "censor")
that was done in Indonesia was such to create a unique,
love-song-downregulating cultural world. And maybe it is unique
in some ways -- even still in "Cinta Melulu" I can hear some uniqueness
-- but it is not nearly as unique as my idea of the possibility of
cultural diversity seems to promise me.
It's true that in American popular music, we have a lot of
love songs, but maybe a lot of non-love songs as well. I may be
disinclined to be a fan of love songs, but I don't remember having
a strong bias against them, and without trying, I ended up getting
into the following bands between age 10 or so and age 30: Cocteau
Twins, My Bloody Valentine, AIR, Stereolab, Klaus Schulze, and
the instrumental music of J. S. Bach -- none of which are rich
sources of heartfelt love songs; as well as They Might Be Giants,
Simon and Garfunkel, and Elvis Costello, which do have some, but a
fair amount, or a lot, of other songs. If you consider a non-
or less-heartfelt love song to be a love song, I guess you could
include MBV among the love song set, if you listen closely to the
lyrics, but those seem like aestheticized dreams more than relations
between two people, and I get the sense that MBV's lyrics
are an afterthought to the music, which is the real point. Mostly
when I listened to their album Loveless, I couldn't tell and
didn't care what they were singing, and same with AIR, Stereolab,
and Cocteau Twins. I was listening more for music itself, perhaps
the emotion of the singing, but not whatever story or point the words
might have been trying to convey. And I would guess that there are a
fair amount of Cocteau Twins, AIR, Stereolab, MBV, etc. listeners
who approach that music like I did, and that the bands, more or
less, expect that. In the "alternative music" tradition,
there is a lot of music that doesn't end up connecting the
listener to romantic love, sometimes by saying nothing about love
in the lyrics, and sometimes by the mixing or how the words in the
vocals are pronounced, so that the lyrics are de-emphasized for
many listeners.
Maybe if you add up all the secular and Christian music in
America (or in the Anglophone world, which is maybe more the cultural
unit for popular music), everything on that culture's "desk" is
being covered. The longing for what is not-here is where art
comes from, perhaps. What do we not already have? Something
in me wants there to be something other than Anglophone popular
music, and maybe I get something of it in Southeast Asian music.
But after I assimilate that, what then? I think that secular
and Christian Anglophone popular music is still "appetite-following"
music, is still part of our "appetite-following / Western" culture,
and deliberately not following appetites, or not viewing life as
being about things like hedonism or preference satisfaction,
might open up new ways of listening to and making music. Maybe
one could hope that, like adults, we can learn to not follow our
appetites without an external force making us not follow them.
Still, there would be the longing for what is not-here, or at
least I would hope so, or else how could we be alive?
--
What if the cultures of the whole world get the same contents on
their "desks" and then talk about them literally? Perhaps they would
see the objects on the "desks" in an uncensored way, or they would
be "appetite-followers" and thus censor them the same way, having the
same human appetites. Would that be harmony and truth? Or would it
be endless stasis, or some other kind of death?
In San Diego, one 4th of July, I think I was a witness to the "Big Bay Boom
Bust". I remember it, but somehow remember it happening late in the day
instead of at night as it really did --
see video of it --
and I remember it being smaller. It was a fireworks show that had a
glitch that made all the rockets go off in 30 seconds -- both more
intense than a normal fireworks show, and disappointing. Everything
went off and then it was all over. Also, I remember a story from the 2004
tsunami, where the huge tsunami wave drew up water from the shore, leaving
parts of the ocean floor exposed, near the beach. Some people ran down
to get the free fish just lying there where the water had been. I wonder
if culturally we are part of a decades-long mixture, in some sense, of
those two metaphors.
Holden Karnofsky has speculated that art is something
that is mined. I have thought similar
things before I read him. Maybe things look really, really wonderful
until we reach the end. One pessimistic version of this is to think that
the "tsunami" is something like AGI killing us all so that it can do
whatever it randomly thinks is important. But another, less pessimistic,
take, is that we will survive the transition to AGI and continue a
bonanza of cultural development, until we homogenize by enriching and
making intercompatible all cultures into one -- maybe this isn't
pessimistic at all, but I wonder, what might be lost if we get rid of
cultural diversity, in the sense of, that there are different more or
less distinct cultures, and also, what life would be like if we no
longer could innovate artistically, because we had enthusiastically
mined everything. If the outcome of that homogenization was sufficiently
bad for us spiritually, that might be the real "tsunami", or part of
it.
I read somewhere that Tyler Cowen was interested in culture,
and so I thought I would get his book Creative Destruction,
which is about how globalization is good for art. I guess I
might want to plug that into the preceding two paragraphs by saying
something like "globalization is the computer glitch in the Big
Bay Boom Bust, or the powerful earthquake that draws the ocean
off the beach in 2004" and the process of art excitingly
intercombining and innovating like crazy is like the fireworks
or the fish.
What I expect or somewhat hope to see in Cowen's book is things like
arguments for why cultural homogenization is a good thing (perhaps
because cultural differences aren't actually good, or because
individual diversity outweighs the loss of them), why homogenization
isn't going to go as far as anti-globalization people might fear,
why artistic innovation will never end, why economic growth outweighs
whatever cultural losses come from cultural homogenization. But
randomly opening the book a few times and looking at a few sentences
makes me think there may be other unexpected things that Cowen brings
out, that I will find interesting.
It occurs to me to ask myself "why does the subject of cultural
diversity matter?". Maybe "culture" is just a form of wealth,
except insofar as it bears on a religion that can save. I think
from an effective altruist standpoint, culture, some form of it,
could bear on whatever is supposed to come out of the Long Reflection.
For some reason, getting the Long Reflection right matters even to
atheists, as though it's necessary in order for the future to really go well,
that future being the repository of atheistic hopes and fears. From
an MSLN perspective, I do think that culture in
any of its forms has some bearing on whether people come to fully
love God -- either it is a temptation, an
anti-temptation, or prepares
one to face temptation or anti-temptation better, if that doesn't just
reduce to temptation or anti-temptation, or if neutral on the
temptation/anti-temptation axis, is something that fills the mind,
using time that could have been spent on spiritual maturing, perhaps
offering rest, or distraction. So the question of culture matters,
and of whether the right culture exists and is accessible. This
relates to cultural diversity and the phenomenon of cultural
homogenization.
So is homogenization (the intermixing and equilibrating of all
cultures into one culture) good or bad? Cowen, I think, will say
that it's good. Some potential dangers that I see (off the top of
my head) are: maybe having coherent (unmixed) traditions allows
people to go deeper into them, maybe belonging to a family (thus an
ethnic group) has some inherent value, maybe traditions that prevent
us from being fulfilled in this life help us to learn to long for
what is not-here, maybe when those longings connect to an
until-now-unknown culture we experience a kind of blessing that will
no longer be possible when we get too good at finding the things
that satisfy our longings (perhaps because they are easily accessible
for being part of our culture, like in the same language), maybe certain
cultures are more compatible with being in tune with true value
(holiness / the output of the Long Reflection). In principle, any
of these could apply to the Long Reflection, and many could have some
bearing on MSLN concerns.
--
(Some more thoughts from my notepad:
Cultural diversity: the desire for an unknown personality type,
"Is this all there is?", Is "all there is" in the right proportions?
Do we have "the answer"? Are we stuck on a fully-developed,
nonetheless wrong, answer?)
--
One thing I've assumed in this post so far is that human biology
is relatively similar around the world, and that therefore culture
can equilibrate to a common, homogenized state. However, in principle,
human biology can be modified and unless transhumanism is checked in
some way, I would assume that it will in the future. This means that
humans can be engineered into new, divergent forms, or even new species,
bringing about new cultures, and reintroducing cultural diversity.
Another less futuristic but still futuristic thought is that
humans will no longer associate in tribes of ethnic descent (no
more Germans, Indians, Arabs, etc.), but instead according to aesthetic
tastes (goths, punks, metalheads, etc.). Or perhaps according to
some other affinity. This is already happening, but it could happen
to a much greater extent. The idea being that we can concentrate
genes by re-sorting peoples (who genetically lean toward certain tastes)
and then create cultures around those genetic affinities. This would
be a more future-proof preservation of cultural diversity that might
arise through civilizational drift.
This raises the question of connection
to one's ancestors, which I take to be the foundation of nations and
national culture. Connection to one's ancestors arises naturally
out of being in a family and being connected to your parents (thus
to their parents). This creates interest in the shared history of
the people group which is one's parents, their parents and siblings,
and so on back to some point in the past, some distant ancestor.
A broad-brush characterization of modernity (and thus the hypermodernity
of transhumanism) is that it is the destruction, erasing, denaturing,
attenuating, setting-aside, etc. of family. And thus, of history,
nations/tribes, and national/tribal culture.
--
I might be able to write more here on this topic, but I think
that's enough for now, and I will go see what Creative Destruction
has to say.
When people are children, they are both immature (or "childish") and
child-like. Sometimes when people are adults, they are immature. Perhaps
some adults can be child-like.
Immaturity is what is undesirable in children, that they are supposed
to grow out of. Emotional neediness, thoughtless irresponsibility, and
perhaps other traits are not necessarily sinful, but they are things that
life tends to push you to give up so that you can live it effectively.
Immaturity also includes the sinful habits that children seem to naturally
develop (in what they are) and whatever
extent to which they themselves choose or deeply prefer those habits
(which is sin in who they are).
Immature people also don't fully understand what they're doing. In this,
they may be held to a lower standard than adults. For instance, a little
girl might tell lies that get her out of trouble. She doesn't really get
the full consequences of being a liar, how that can ripple out through her
whole life. So her parents might not look at her as a disturbing person, just
an immature person. They might try to turn her away from her lying behavior,
but not come down harshly on her. But, imagining an adult daughter, who
lies just as assiduously to get out of trouble, we might expect her parents
to perhaps want to get as far away from her as they can, perhaps functionally
or even officially disowning her. They might be offended by her dishonesty,
find it shameful, or simply not trust her so much that they can't have her
in their lives, living out the potentially loaded parent-child dynamic.
If you don't fully understand what you're doing, are you still sinning
when you do things like lie for your own gain? To some extent you are.
It's dangerous for five-year-olds to sin, even with their relatively innocent
minds, because any sin is dangerous. To choose to sin involves preferring
something that keeps you from being in tune with God 100%, and if you harden
on that preference, you will reject God.
Fortunately, five-year-olds grow
up so that they can understand and turn away from sin. As they grow, their
capacities to understand and will things grow, along with their developing
brains and understandings of the world, and who they are grows to inhabit
these new capacities. Some people, perhaps the developmentally disabled,
or the congenitally innocent, don't develop all of these capacities in this
life. I assume that in the Millennium,
they are given new bodies / brains that can understand sufficiently for them
to deal with whatever sin is in them. But, for those who do have the
capacities, to not use them is a choice, and a dangerous choice. If we
prefer to be immature in order to avoid dealing with sin, maybe we love
sin in some way. Also, if we do not inhabit our full capacities, our love
of God may be shallow, because we are not establishing our whole beings
in loving him (loving with all of our hearts, souls, minds, and
strength).
Sometimes choosing a role automatically inclines
you to a whole set of behaviors. You can try to take on the role of
being a child, or your younger self, and this may necessarily give you
both child-like and immature traits. Some people may have to put their
younger self in the past, even at the risk of losing some of the good and
beautiful child-like traits, but some may not. One would hope that those
who love childhood could pick apart the immaturity from their own
child-likeness and could adopt the role of child or their younger self
without getting into immaturity, which can lead to sin, or is sin in
itself.
To the extent that family is a space in which immaturity is tolerated,
it can be spiritually dangerous. It is more gratuitously dangerous if
it encourages immaturity. People need slack to grow, and to an extent,
they have to go at their own pace. So tolerating immaturity is a kind of
necessary evil. But encouraging it is an unnecessary evil. Families include
everyone and in a sense travel at the pace of the least-developed member.
People like to be in families, but if Family conquered the world, it
would be spiritually dangerous. There has to be something outside family
and being in families for us to become holy. Families index themselves
to their children, where those children are, in order to protect, nurture,
and include them, but there needs to be some thing or things outside of
Family that are indexed to the truth.
Perhaps Truth and Family coincide if each are properly understood.
In order to be protected, nurtured, and included for all eternity,
children must someday come into tune with God. We might think that the
truth recommends including everyone in the family of God.
--
[17 June 2022: I wrote this section mistakenly, having not
re-read my X-Risk review before writing. In the review, the "silly"
thing is the prospect of humans modifying themselves to take satisfaction
in (/ caring about) the outputs of the process of "piling up art, science,
games", which conveniently happen to be things our civilization can crank
out. Art, games, and science themselves are not necessarily considered
"silly" or "cheap".]
[I should take this
as a lesson to be more careful when I write, but I do still like the
thinking in this section, though it came about out of a mistake.]
[Art and games (and, I suppose, science) are not silly and cheap when
they help us survive, or grow up. Also they are not cheap when they are
not wealth. Wealth is what makes us rich, not in the sense of "wealth is
a thing we sell to make lots of money which makes us rich", but in the
sense of what makes us rich to possess it or participate in it
ourselves. Full-grown love could be considered wealth. "I'm becoming
rich off of video games" or "art" or even "cool scientific discoveries"
is like having a lot of candy or eating a lot of candy. Even "I'm
becoming rich off of love" is like eating a lot of candy -- immature
love, or fake love, or love which is just a form of pleasure. But
full-grown love really does make you rich, and it's appropriate to
think of it as wealth.]
This subject makes me think of my review of
X-Risk. I attacked aspects of transhumanism on the grounds that
they were childish, but I realize that to attack childishness can simultaneously
attack childlikeness. Transhumanists who want a future of 10^100 art
and game units may simply be childlike, overcome by the wonder of fun,
beauty, and large numbers. As I write this, I feel like I'm making
fun of transhumanists, like I still haven't learned not to be harsh
or even disrespectful of transhumanist
(adult) children, of the child in them.
Because (adult) transhumanists are adults, I think that in a way,
they can handle being made fun of or treated harshly. But even adults
can be damaged by words. I don't want to take back my enmity with a
certain kind of transhumanism, or the point I wanted to make that there's
something cheap or silly about its goals. But children have the
seriousness and the innocence to not be cheap or silly in their relations
to things that are in some sense lacking. When I was a boy, I played with
Legos, little pieces of plastic. The Legos could express my imagination,
but what I made by way of instantiating my imaginings were structures that
were too small for me to live in -- like an elaborate submarine, too small
to be in, that would have filled up with water undersea. When I played
with Legos, I did so with focus and absorption, not condescending when I
played. Perhaps transhumanists are childlike and thus serious and
innocent in their love of such lacking things as pleasure, fun, and
beauty. I think a thing is fundamentally what God makes of it, and
part of what he sees in something has to do with how it is seen by
his different children and what they need, and so maybe childlike
transhumanists add something pure to the cheapness and silliness
of those forms of wealth, in comparison to full-grown love.
But, again, transhumanists are also adults and have an adult
side to them. Some of them, by how hard they work, show that they
are people who can value things even when those things bring them
pain, tedium, and ugliness. They have the capacity for full-grown
love, and not just childlike love, or childish pseudo-love. As I
think about the childlike and childish people who seem to surround me,
and I think of the value of childlikeness, I can see that perhaps in
the future there may be some reason for there to be art and games in
great profusion in order to impress childlike people with large numbers.
However, I think that it is dangerous for any child who has an adult
side to not exercise that adult side. We need to love with all of our
beings, and to learn to really love. By doing so we can really be
both child-like, and good adults. Otherwise, we are immature or even
evil adults, who do not fully love and truly value, whom God cannot
live with forever.
--
12 September 2023: I think a child who really loves would
be happy with one work of art, or one favorite game, or one scientific
discovery. They would really connect with that thing and feel feelings
of love toward it. So maybe in the ideal future, we should looking to
maximize that tendency, and thus not need a huge pile of art, games, and
scientific discoveries. So, to try to address what I remember of
X-Risk, I would say that a booster for X-risk prevention could
say "someday we can really learn to love, as long as we don't get wiped
out by an X-risk".
Sometimes, I have idly thought about what I would do if I were president.
I think the last time I thought about this much, I decided I would run
on a platform of keeping everything the same, except making high-expected-value
changes aimed at a long-term payoff. For instance, investing in programs to
seed civil society, or mental health education and training in public
schools (and/or teaching young people how to deal with life and not
just numbers and words), and probably other things I can't remember now.
Here we see a duality of "structure" and "change". The numerous possibly
somewhat misguided or even maybe corrupt government tendencies and programs
are the "structure" which keeps things the same and helps keep them from falling
apart. Then, whatever creative things I want to do to make things better
in the long-term, are the "change" that one would hope would make my
hypothetical presidency worth it -- going beyond the mean.
I think about churches, and how sometimes they are good at finding people
to fill the role of "structure", but in some cases, they don't find people
who are oriented toward change. "Change" in a church is not just
"congregational vision" where the church tries to do things that look kind
of like when businesses or nations try to change, or what activists are
going for when they protest, but rather also disciple-making -- encouraging,
promoting, modeling-for-imitation, etc. holiness, -- which is change in the
individual's life.
People in an individual's life can be structure, change, or perhaps a
mixture of the two.
--
There is a connection between creativity and "change", and between
technical proficiency and "structure". You can be technically proficient
and lack inspiration, and also you can work for structure without
inspiration. But (generally, or even always) when you work for change
and creativity, you need inspiration to be successful, or even to attempt
to do anything. So it might be useful for those who pursue change to
pursue creativity, so that through creativity, they can get connected to
inspiration. Or, to ask God for a spirit, for the same purpose.
I didn't plan on writing a review of In the Shadow of the Banyan
(by Vaddey Ratner). I read it to pass the time, rather than as part of
some kind of study or writing program. But now that I've read it, I have
some thoughts about it.
The book is a novel, based on the author's actual experiences as a
young girl, member of the Cambodian royal family during the time of the
Khmer Rouge, an anti-royal, anti-Western Communist revolutionary group
that killed millions of Cambodians through purges, overwork, and
underfeeding. She journeys from a relatively sheltered situation at
the beginning of the book (a child who lives in the imaginal and
familiar world of family, stories, Asian
Buddhism, Hindu myths), through a series of progressively darker
dislocations and losses, until she is struck dumb. She manages to
survive (mirroring the author's survival) and make it out of Cambodia
with her mother.
I thought of not writing this review, because the thoughts that
I had feel like ones that are underdeveloped at this point, or that
might not fit what I want to write about in this chapter of the blog,
but something insists in me that I do write, and maybe I'm writing
notes for later writing that explores the following subjects in more
detail.
I identified with three themes that I saw in the book: The imaginal
world, the Revolution, and the cross.
--
The spiritual/imaginal world was something that the narrator's
grandmother, and the narrator, both spent a fair amount of time in,
as though when we are new to the world, or not long left in it, we
are better able to see things like tevodas (angel-like beings),
ghosts, or connect with the story of Indra, with mythical explanations
for things. I don't remember there being any moments where the imaginal
world appeared in the sensory world (the "real" world), but the grandmother
and narrator were able to see it. I think that there is a part of me that
lives in that world -- in fact, that's the world of philosophy, though
it often presents itself prosaically and mechanistically. And, I
sometimes feel (sometimes too much) that I belong there more than I do in
the sensory world. I'm not sure I have much of a point to make in
bringing this up, but that was my reaction.
--
The Revolution spoke to me, because of how much the revolutionaries
were into willing and working. The book shows how some of them were
heartless, psychopathic, and corrupt, and this makes me think that the
revolutionary spirit is dangerous.
I know that some of my past writing (notably How Can We Love?)
could, perhaps in its emphasis, if not its text read carefully, be
considered a broadly left- (or "revolutionary humanist"-) leaning thing.
It has some of the spirit of Revolution, even though it says on the surface
of it things that go against Revolution. I think I would say now
that the book is flawed, to the extent that it lends itself to a
revolutionary humanist reading, because that was not my intention.
But it is a somewhat revolutionary thing and that gives me one reason to
want to think about the dangers of the revolutionary spirit.
In the Shadow of the Banyan mentions that there was a
split within the Khmer Rouge between the Cause and the Party. The Cause
was idealistic, but the Party took over. Causes tend to draw on one
kind of energy, that of ordinary people, non-psychopathic human desires.
But parties can focus on their own well-being, rather than devoting
themselves fully to a cause, and outcompete groups still into causes.
This is a pessimistic thought, and it's worth noting that there are a lot
of places where parties exist but do not wipe out idealism.
(Moloch seems like an undefeatable dynamic, but
for some reason it doesn't always rule.) There is a tension between Party
and Cause tendencies in a society, and it's wise to be concerned about
how any cause could turn into a purely partisan thing.
I know that the revolutionary spirit is dangerous, but, as long
as the status quo needs to be changed in some way, it is necessary,
and perhaps revolutions, or the spirit of revolutions, is needed
to maintain the status quo (if you don't fix things, you decay,
and some fixing is "microrevolutionary"). A Communist rejoinder
to a book speaking of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge might be
"fair enough, they were corrupt and captured by psychopathy, and
the empowerment of the corruption and psychopathy was enabled by
the revolutionary spirit, but you should also do a calculation,
alongside that of the death toll from the Khmer Rouge, of the lives
lost due to the corruption and psychopathy that prevents capitalist
society from doing the most it's really capable of doing to help the
poor". (This sounds like something an effective altruist or EA-type
person might try to calculate, or already has.) It may turn out to be
the case that revolutionary Communism always turns out to be worse
for people, but capitalism (or "capitalism+" (plus civil society? the
state?)) that isn't doing its best also (less visibly) has blood on
its hands.
As is often the case, formulas are dangerous. If you're
into Communism or capitalism, you need to be into the good version of
that, because the bad version is as bad as the ideology you reject,
or perhaps worse.
Should we think in terms of "blood on people's hands"? I think
there is an awful truth to it. The moral truth is something that,
when comprehended, causes people to do the moral
thing. Is it perhaps misleading to talk about "blood on people's hands",
is that a deceptive truth? Perhaps for
some people, it is deceptive, and for others, it is basically non-misleading.
I think that we gaze at the harshest moral truths and then walk away from
them to do our relaxed versions of good. (I think that the Drowning
Child Illustration is one of the harshest moral truths and generally
EAs walk away from it to do their relaxed version of good, as much as
that relaxed version of good might burn them out.) If we never gazed,
we might never change into the much more mundane, if still countercultural,
versions of ourselves that live in the shadow of the gaze.
I try to focus on saying what's true (because I'm a writer, and I
feel like that's my "professional" responsibility). I don't think that
the Khmer Rouge's worldview is correct, as much as they might be on to
something when they see the moral truth of people held down by the
ruling classes, or suffering or dying prematurely. For instance, this
life is not the limit of our existence, as they thought, and so purity
is something that is not desperately urgent. Purity is something that
is necessary, and will come in its time -- the sooner the better, but
not desperately soon. I think that MSLN / New Wine
System-descended thinking is good for addressing both revolutionary
humanism and traditional evangelical religion in their crazily desperate
(and on their view, completely necessary) sense that they have to do
radical good (on a societal and personal level) NOW, that time is running
out for people who must get the essential good (a nice life, or conversion
to Christianity) in this life, with death coming all-too-soon.
I understand that the Khmer Rouge, as Communists, were atheists.
I believe that God exists, and if I'm correct in that belief, then
the emphasis on human well-being found in Communism (as well as in
other forms of humanism) could easily be misguided if it ignores
God, how our relationships to God are the most fundamental
field of altruism. Much of what revolutionary
(or microrevolutionary) humanists want to achieve is somewhat
orthogonal to people's relationships to God and may not be as
valuable, necessary, or urgent as it seems. Making things better
from an atheistic standpoint could, in some cases, be dangerous
or harmful from a theistic standpoint.
I feel a strong momentum in the direction of secular humanist
altruism. For instance, it's relatively easy for me to feel a sense of
outrage, or something like that, at things like physical poverty. I
think I am somewhat wired to responding to the vivid, loud, and obvious,
as I suppose most of us are. The habit of wanting to remove
suffering or prolong life, in this life, is not the worst habit.
But I have to remember that there's more to the truth than this
life.
--
Finally, I saw the cross
in Ratner's/the narrator's experience. Not that she pursued the cross,
although her father did in a fairly obvious way, but in that she
underwent the cross. There was a moment toward the end where, to
me, it seemed like the narrator died inside in a somewhat good way,
and thenceforth had nothing to lose, and little (or less) to fear.
(See chapter 29, pp. 295 - 296 in first hardcover edition.) That is one
dimension of undergoing the cross, that it pushes us to the point that
in some sense we are okay with dying or our death (maybe this is something
I can validly connect to the moment in the novel). We are made to
be willing to die by being forced close to death, and having "died",
we are free. Maybe we have some free will in the matter? I'm not
sure, but the narrator was given a gift at that moment of "survivable
death" (again, if I'm reading this right). I may want to look at
In the Shadow of the Banyan when I someday write a proper
book on the cross.
To see the truth of evil is to see that it should not be. This
implies action. (Similarly to see the truth of good is to see that
it should be, which may also imply action.) So you can't see the moral
truth without acting (or willing to act, in case you don't have the
ability to act). If you can choose to have the ability to act, or
to act more effectively, doing so follows from seeing the moral truth.
We have reactions to evil things which are not necessarily the
recognition of the wrongness of them. Perhaps evil makes us sad or
feel powerless. To look on evil, when it makes us feel too powerless
to will that it not be, is not to see that it should not be.
I've heard it said (something like) that real forgiveness is not when
you say that nothing wrong was done in the first place, but when you
see that something wrong was done to you, but you don't hold it against
the person who wronged you. Forgiveness doesn't change the past, or
change right and wrong. Maybe what it does is allows a person, who
wronged you in the past, to have become a new person, whom you no longer see
as the person who wronged you. The person you forgive is the living
person, even if the person who wronged you, whom you see in your
memory, will always be a horror there.
(Can you forgive someone but still not trust them? Presumably you
don't trust them because you don't want to risk the possibility that
they haven't changed, or haven't changed for the better. Perhaps in
one sense you can still release them from their past deeds, no longer
see them as the same person, while still being wary of their possible
or certain present character.)
"Moral impatience" could be something like the seeing of horror in
the present world and the feeling that it should not be that way, that
people should not be as they are. Impatience can be virtuous, just
like anger, but both are dangerous. Impatience, like anger, is hard
to hold in yourself. If it can lead to a good action, it is functional,
but if held in oneself, can burn a person out.
So patience is what is called for -- but, there is a patience which
is like the false forgiveness which says that nothing wrong was done
in the first place, which simply ceases to see the moral truth. If you
back off seeing the moral truth enough, you sink into bad comfort, or even
despair. You somehow become incapable of doing the good you're really
strong enough to do.
So the patience that is called for is like true forgiveness. Somehow
you have to maintain some kind of psychological structure that can
hold two opposites in you at once, to address the paradox of willingly
waiting through what should not be. Perhaps two programs running in your
brain simultaneously. One being a high-quality awareness of evil which
calls you to fight evil (and thus to act when possible), and have an
emotional witness to what should not be, as much as you can sustain.
And the other being a high-quality ability to wait -- to watch and wait,
and peacefully wait to speak.
One possible way that people can have multiple personalities is that
for some part of their lives they develop their authentic view of the
world -- just them and truth. Then, they maintain that authentic view
in a container within them, while being surrounded by people who
push the habitus of the social environment on them.
But, to be in that container keeps them shut off from people around them.
Sometimes this is sustainable, but limits their ability to speak to
other people. Other times it is unsustainable. The ocean waves of
convention beat them down until the container breaks. Then, they start
identifying with their role in the
habitus, but also with their authentic view that still remains. They
switch between identifying with one and the other, and thus become
incoherent on the level of the I. Before, they knew who they
were and saw the role they played in society as a role. But now,
the "actor" begins to lose their distinction from the role they play.
People in exile or captivity may struggle to remain themselves, and
sometimes become incoherent.
I watched an Alice
Cappelle video (unfortunately, I don't remember which one) in which she
related something to the concept of "habitus", from sociology.
I don't always faithfully remember what I pick up from other people,
but sometimes prefer to use my own memory or misremembering of a concept
in my own writing, as though my writing is my own world suited to my own mind,
the way the misremembering is. I suspect I have done this with a similar
concept, sarkar, which I got from a
B. K. Shivani video
(unfortunately, I also don't remember which one).
My memory of "habitus" is that it is the way in which the people around
you in a given social setting (peer group, scene, organization, nation)
condition you to play your role in it -- and, if you play your role, you
are conditioning the other people in that social setting to play their
role.
The conditioning could be a mindset, vibe, or sarkar. Or could come
from having to be responsible for certain things, or meeting certain
expectations. People might not be intentional when they condition you
into your/their habitus -- probably often or usually aren't.
Habitus is like a reciprocating engine, which vibrates at a certain
frequency and is self-sustaining. Maybe habitus is the sarkar, or
part of the sarkar, of groups of people.
The instinct to respond (which sometimes is "responsibility" as we
normally term it, or it could be something else, like a self-interested
hunger) is, perhaps, what makes habitus run. So bad societies can run on
bad responsibility.
My impression of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis
Stevenson, having [when I had] just read it:
It is useful to read to give emotional weight to the problem of
humans' dual nature of good and evil, and to good and evil themselves.
The last chapter ("Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case") gives
more food for thought.
I noted there (in the book) that Jekyll initially wanted to separate
the evil nature from the good in him. I think, looking at things from a
society-wide or political level, we sometimes split parts of society off
from us to be evil for us. Maybe we don't do this intentionally, or maybe
we do on some level. Cops and military are exposed to evil and it corrupts
some of them or gives them temptations most of us don't face which they
then sometimes give in to. People who live in bad neighborhoods pay
less in rent and thus can be paid less. So someone needs to keep the
neighborhoods bad. Childhoods of abuse may cause people to earn less
if they don't go to school. So they provide workers for low wage jobs.
Corrupt and authoritarian foreign regimes keep their societies
dysfunctional so that they don't develop too much -- keeping wages
lower. Building factories in least-developed countries makes those
countries wealthier. So we need some dysfunctional countries to wait
in the wings when standards of living rise in the countries we have
developed.
Money can't buy everything. A person has to convert that money into
a good or service, and certain occupations are more often staffed by
people who have a certain political persuasion. If you are a certain
kind of Democrat, you may despise capitalism, and that may not make you
a good person to go into business. If you are a certain kind of
Republican, you may despise cultural refinement, and that may not make
you a good person to make art or entertainment. The Republican has the
kids watch Disney because the kids will drive her crazy otherwise, and
the Democrat over and over buys things from capitalist people because
he would live in material want otherwise. So it looks like we need
the mental software, or house, of Democrat thinking, to spiritually
nourish the Democrat so he can make his entertainment, and the mental
software, or house, of Republican thinking, to spiritually nourish the
Republican so she can run her business. If that's true, then no matter
how much the Republican detests Democrat culture, or vice versa, they
need that each other's cultures exist, and they need people to believe
in those horrible Republican, or Democrat, values.
Does this mean that there is no such thing as evil, or that evil
is necessary and thus not practically recommended-against? Which
would you rather, to live a long and healthy life in an evil land,
or to be poor and unhappy in a virtuous land? What if the good
life requires that we all participate in evil, either directly,
or by proxy? One could say that everything that exists is inextricably
intertwined with everything else, and that therefore evil is necessary
for what is good, and so we should do nothing about it, and cease
to regard it as evil.
No, it's possible for there to be real evil. I don't want to
say that the Republicans are evil and the Democrats good, or vice
versa, because I have vowed to be apolitical,
but in principle, one of them might be more right than the other.
Maybe they both have issues, but a third as yet unarticulated
political culture basically doesn't. This third culture might
work just as well for business owners as for creative people, or
whatever other stereotypically Republican and Democrat occupations
one would want to mention. There could be a morally better culture
that also unifies people politically, and we can have both political
harmony and moral progress / purification in one new status quo. Likewise
with the examples of the low wages, maybe those of us with greater
wealth and life-situation-resources could simply pay more for what
we consume, helping other people to have higher wages. Someone
could somehow help people leave their abusive spouses or parents,
reform corrupt and authoritarian governments, and we would all pay
more for our cheapest goods and it would be fine because we would
be well-off ourselves. People who currently have a hard time affording
those cheapest goods could be helped by those who have extra resources.
Again, things could just be better.
But, that change can't happen immediately, and in the meantime,
evil props up good. Sometimes we find it convenient to prop up
good with evil and then forget that we benefit from evil, and become
morally outraged with evil that we actually need in an important
sense. If we're willing to do the work that the evil people do
for us, maybe we can reduce the evil. Otherwise we are constituted,
in some sense, by something we disown.
Is the status quo fragile, or anti-fragile? If we stress it,
will it break? Or will it grow into something better? If we think
it's 100% fragile, we will be unable to practically favor morality (change
things into something better), and soon, we will fiducially or even
epistemically stop regarding evil as evil. A fragile status quo
then destroys consciousness of morality. Or, people who are afraid of
breaking a fragile status quo do. But if the status quo is anti-fragile,
then moral consciousness can be rewarded with societal success /
health / sustainability. And moral consciousness makes sense if we
are willing to risk breaking the status quo in the attempt to make
it really good.
(Being revolutionary is not always a good idea. Breaking the
status quo is a bad thing in itself and can make people conservative,
feel like the world is fragile, so they then try to extinguish moral
consciousness. But if you have zero sense that it's okay to risk
the status quo, in theory, you'll never feel like it's okay to try
to change it -- unless, maybe, the proposed changes are very clearly
safe to make. And adopting that level of caution may be costly,
and sometimes not worth it.)
In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by the evil being separate, it
is freed to become more evil. When we separate out and segregate
the evil or that which bears evil, it intensifies. Bad neighborhoods
and bad cop cultures both become worse. Prisons can intensify the
evil of those sent to be punished by those prisons' evil.
Does this mean we should keep all evil mixed in with all good?
It seems like maybe Stevenson was trying to say that Jekyll, who
all his life struggled with his dual moral nature, needed to keep
struggling, with his evil stuck in his own self-concept, and that
when he split it off into Hyde, he ended up, when Jekyll, still
having the dual nature, plus there was the time he was Hyde and
was purely evil. There may be some wisdom in that. We start to
make a kind of devil's bargain, perhaps, when we outsource evil
to someone else and stop struggling with it ourselves, when we
have someone else face temptations for
us.
Nevertheless, the way of civilization and progress ("progress"
used in a descriptive and not normative sense) is for us
to cleanly separate the good from the bad, so that we can be more
established. I think
that the ordinary person can't handle the worst levels of evil (or
amoral behavioral threat, as from some kinds of mental illness).
But if we have discipline, maybe we will resist cleaning up society
too much, so that ordinary people still have to deal with evil people
to some extent and we have to face the temptations faced by those who are
professionals in dealing with evil. I don't know how practical this
idea is, and I do not relish the thought of having to deal with
evil people myself, or with having a job like that of a police officer
or prison guard, but maybe as frightful as that sounds to me, it
would be better for me to face those kinds of roles -- at least, if
nothing else, to face the mild or moderate evil in the world that
perhaps is within my reach, to help prevent it from growing to
a size unmanageable to me by my (or somebody's) neglect.
I think the book, particularly the last chapter, is good for
those who are thinking about holiness and morality. I think the book,
overall, is stronger as a source of thoughts about morality on a
personal level, rather than the political. But right now, I'm
more interested in the political or society-wide angle to it.
I think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde might give insight on the
ways in which temporary leaders of bodies of people might think about
how to behave given that they won't always be in power. Also, how to
think about nations that have within them radically different
factions.
There was some connection in the book to that question of providing
for when you're not in power. Jekyll sometimes set things up so that when he
was Hyde, Hyde wouldn't ruin things. I imagine that in liberal democracies,
governments think about the fact that they will be replaced by people
who don't like their agenda (the opposition). That might be an
interesting area to read about if I come upon a source.
One thing that
maybe could be pointed out from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that I
know that Jekyll provides for the fact that he will become Hyde, and I
vaguely feel like Hyde provides for the fact that he will become Jekyll.
This asymmetry to how I remember this suggests the thought that Jekyll
was the more responsible of the two and therefore did more of the providing
for the reality of Hyde, and had more of a concept that he was responsible
for what Hyde did. So, suppose there is a Faction A and Faction B in a
country, and Faction A is more responsible, both in the sense of interfering
more in / providing for the existence of, and feeling more accountable for,
Faction B, than Faction B does of Faction A. Metapolitics (views on the
fact that there are politics, factions, etc.) is part of political culture.
A move in Faction A vs. Faction B politics might be in denying that there
is an overall nation that both are part of, weakening this sense of
responsibility. An amoral or evil Faction B (Hyde-like) might have
a sort of "youthful strength" by ignoring responsibility. Possibly
Faction A's attempts to take care of what Faction B will likely do
could end up doing more harm than good sometimes, and Faction B can "shine
by comparison" by not messing up that way.
--
On a personal note, I find that I have different moods, because I
have bipolar disorder. So this book, and thinking about it, thematizes
the question of how I might provide for myself when I'm in a maybe
radically different mood.
Epistemic status: I think the idea that follows might be worth
pursuing, but I'm less sure about it than other things I post. I think
it would be maybe useful in political discussions, in cases where there
is time to deliberate. I guess it could be used on a more personal level
as well. But I haven't thought through whether it would
really be practical to implement.
I'm not sure the following is an exhaustive list, but I think that
people can be motivated by: moral idealism, evil, and self-preservation.
If we are trying to justify our behavior, attitudes, and so on, we
can't use evil -- we'll say that evil things are by definition unjustified
and thus not grounds for justifying anything else.
So we're left with moral idealism and self-preservation. (Opening for
objection: maybe there are other options?)
If that's the case, then we should have to declare how much of our
behavior, attitudes, etc. are motivated by moral idealism and how much
of them are motivated by self-preservation. If a given behavior or
attitude is complex, which part of it is motivated by what, and for
each individual part, if it is simple, what percentage "morally
idealistic" is it versus "self-preservative".
Then, if we rely on moral idealism to justify ourselves, we need to
cite which moral foundation we are using, and bind ourselves to the
implications that follow from that moral foundation.
Arguably, self-preservation is only a valid reason to do things
if self-preservation itself is grounded in a moral foundation. So maybe
any proposed course of action involved in a serious decision needs to
be morally justified. Perhaps moral idealism "sticks its neck out"
as being moral more obviously than self-preservation.
Self-preservation might not claim to be moral and evade notice.
But strictly speaking, self-preservation also needs to be justified.
How can morality be valid if morality doesn't really exist (moral
anti-realism)? And what would it take for something like morality to
exist? What is the character of morality, what or who is it?
What does it want (or "want")?
You can fight your sins one by one, or, from another perspective, can
try to train yourself out of bad behaviors one by one. If you don't
have success, or if you find that you can't keep ahead of them (your
focus on one of them means you can't focus on others which come back,
perhaps), then maybe you need to take a different tack.
Humans are often actors and wear spirits and roles. Sometimes you
have a choice of which spirit to take in, or role to play. You could
take in the spirit of
Smerdyakov,
Dmitri, Ivan, or Alyosha. Or the role of "member in good standing
of your society, political tribe, or family of origin or choice". You
could try to take on the spirit of Jesus, or of Mary or Moses. Your
behaviors will follow from the role you play, which is bound to the
spirit of the character. In this way you can do greater good than by
dealing with individual behaviors. (Or perhaps greater harm, depending
on the role chosen.)
One thing I've been thinking about recently is how nations are and
are not like individuals. We can mentalize nations as individuals, or
as horses with riders, or as impersonal phenomena (maybe in other ways?).
When a president acts, does the nation act? Presidents come and go,
like different personalities in someone with multiple personalities.
An individual president can be evil. Do they make the whole nation --
all of its trends, cultures, emergent phenomena -- evil?
We attack a whole nation to deal with an evil president. We might
have discipline to not see the nation as being the same as the
president. But maybe the president affects how we see the nation.
A president (or other elites) can shape the nation they live in.
We are privy to our own conflicting thoughts and feelings. But
when we see other people, we are not privy to theirs. All we see
is their behavior. We mentalize a person within the behavior --
that is them. But we know from our inside view of ourselves that
there is a distinction between the I and the different forces
within us. It's like we are presidents of ourselves. We have some
control over our body's behavior. But we are not identical with
the body that behaves, even though that forms other people's view of
us. Functionally, maybe, we are the body that behaves. And maybe
if we are good presidents of ourselves, we rule over our conflicting
thoughts and feelings better, to form a stronger, more coherent
"nation".
That's one dimension of the question of "how do nations resemble
individuals?" and I assume that there may be other dimensions. Does
it make sense to look at nations using the tools of psychology? Are
nations like people with borderline personality disorder, multiple
personalities? Are there therapies to use on a nation that might
produce more coherent "national psychologies"? Other questions,
after those, might be "is it maybe a good thing that nations are
incoherent or semicoherent?" or "what are the upsides of national
incoherence or semicoherence?"
One story I've written recently
(Two Personalities in the Body Politic) talks
somewhat about these issues and it is a takeoff on Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. I don't remember in any
detail what goes on in that book, but I can easily re-read it because
it is short.
So, I intend to read it, through the lens of how it might possibly
shed light on this question of "national psychology".
I think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde might give insight on the
ways in which temporary leaders of bodies of people might think about
how to behave given that they won't always be in power. Also, how to
think about nations that have within them radically different
factions.
Anti-temptations sound like unambiguously
good things. They draw people toward God. How could anyone resist the
appeal of God? But, they are risky.
Temptations are obviously bad, but can have a
non-obvious benefit. When we are tempted, we can decide, out of our
own personal will, to reject the temptation. Maybe we reject it in
the moment by not acting on it. Or, after we give in, we reject it
retrospectively by regretting giving in and turning back to God. The
stronger the temptation, sometimes, the stronger the rejection of it. That
rejection can harden our hearts against sin and drive us into loyalty
to God. So actually temptation can enable willful people to get
closer to God than they might without it. With their willfulness
they reject the temptation to turn against God, and in so doing turn
toward God more firmly, truly, and permanently.
If a willful person is exposed to anti-temptation, they might reject
God, out of willfulness, as the opposite of what happens when exposed
to temptation.
Someone exposed to anti-temptation might become "inoculated" to
God, enjoying the pleasantness of the anti-temptation without
connecting to the real person of God underneath. They also might
only be able to love an appealing God, or appealingness itself in
its divine mode.
When we feel good about God, we may be feeling good about a false
image of God. So do we really love God? A true anti-temptation tries
to connect us with the real God, but we may willfully misunderstand
what the anti-temptation is talking about. It offers something real,
but we missee it and thus refer, de re, to something else.
Also, when we are feeling
good about God, we may make motions of dedication to him, and may
offer a generous portion, perhaps 95% of our hearts to him. But for
us to be saved, we need to give 100%. Having drawn so close to God
with the 95% that we have given, perhaps we start to harden in that
state, ignoring the 5% we keep away from dedication to him, and
the 5%'s size and undedicated status can harden. A hardened 5% of
sin is worse than a rough and obvious 50% or more of sin that
we know is sin and is still uncommitted enough for us to change.
For these reasons (I think maybe in contradiction to what I might
have said or implied earlier), "throwing anti-temptation at the
problem" (like "throwing money at the problem") is imperfect and
potentially dangerous. Anti-temptation is a valuable part of people's
experiential diets, but temptation is also needed for many people.
Maybe it's worth stressing that "anti-temptation can't replace
your decision to come into tune with God."
