Legitimacy Can't Go Back on Itself

Epistemic status: provisional.

In MSLN Theodicy, the point is made that if legitimacy were to will something that was illegitimate, it would make it legitimate. A (quasi?-)Nietzschean response might be to say that a truly great and life-affirming legitimacy would will everything, make all that is illegitimate legitimate.

But what I meant was more like "legitimacy, either through its nature or what it decides, is what it is, and couldn't go back on that, because if it did, it would call what really was illegitimate (what it considered illegitimate) legitimate (which it isn't)."

There's somewhat of a debate over whether God can determine what the good is, or whether he is subject to it himself (or they are subject to it themselves, as legitimacy comprises more than one person). Is it part of God's nature that certain things be right or wrong? (Legitimacy must call certain things illegitimate, by legitimacy's nature.) That seems plausible to me. It's also plausible to me that God decides what is right, and once the decision is made, it's irrevocable, even by him. So sometimes he decides what it should be by his will (something like divine command theory?) but after that, he's subject to it as much as anyone. God obeys himself.

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God can command us not to do things that aren't really sins at root. But if he has commanded us, we shouldn't go against his commands. If we do, we sin, because our disobedience (our turning from his voice) is the sin. To an extent, God could (and from the Bible, seemingly did) make commands that are either arbitrary, or only made sense from an ancient perspective. (Or perhaps from the perspective of, "what beliefs cause a nation of God's people to flourish from the perspective of civilization?" / "what makes a viable tradition for human organisms in their environment?")

That we should have obeyed those commands then (or must obey arbitrary/historically-contingent ones of our own) might be up to God's free deciding. But that we should obey God, whatever that may cash out to, is not up to God's free deciding. That's fundamental to what goodness (as definition) is. God is legitimacy itself, and for us to be legitimate, we must be in tune with God. God can ordain things to be temporarily morally necessary. But there may be (I would guess that there are) things which are permanently morally necessary, which are not up to God to change anymore.

Building Trust in Natural Feelings of What to Pursue

In Romantic Sense of Kinship, I talked about romantic feelings and how they seem to call for action. But this question can be generalized. Other kinds of feelings can call for action. Which should we pursue?

Our natural feelings can be helpful guides to what is good to pursue if our nature has been tuned to be in line with God and reality. If we value what God values and have (consciously and subconsciously) an accurate map of reality and of our ability to act on that map, then we will have good desires and be in a position to act on them. Then we can trust our own intuitive senses of what is desirable to do.

If we have God's values (more or less), then we will be in kinship with him. If we find someone romantically attractive, it will likely be because we share kinship with them, and there's a good chance that their kinship with us will imply their kinship with God. A kinship with someone else that is along the road of values that inherently involve us being kin with God is a good pathway across which to connect, bond with, become loyal to, someone else. So then it is likely that if we sufficiently share God's values, there is a high probability that whomever we fall in love with is either God's particular choice for us, or one of a number of acceptable choices we could make. (This discussion also applies to other forms of friendship.)

With romance and friendship, a lot of the heavy lifting of figuring out if pursuits (pursuits of people) are worthwhile is done by just figuring out kinship. Finding kinship, shared values, is a big part of facing reality in that context. But what about work pursuits? There competence involves more than just fitting the values of the work pursuit with your own values and your own values with God's values.

One way to be competent is in the usual worldly way, and there's a lot to be said for diligently building up your competence in a worldly way. But sometimes you can be more competent by being guided by God, and also, it is very important for your spiritual life for you to love and trust God, and listen to God. Sometimes, your own salvation may be more important than whatever good you would have done for others, for all you know. So it could be best for you to pursue an altruistic method that has attunement with God baked into it.

If you become kin with God, then he can speak to you more richly. As you become kin with God, you develop sensitivities, memories, and understandings, through which God can speak to you. A pipe organ may have many small pipes, and many large ones, shaped in different ways to produce different sounds. If a pipe organ lacks the 32 foot or 16 foot pipes (the longest ones which produce the lowest notes), a piece of music might not be playable, one which relies on bass sounds. Or if it is played, it lacks the bass, and doesn't convey the composer's full intentions.

The better God can speak to you, the better you will become and be kin with him, and sometimes the better decisions you will naturally make in work and friendship.

So if we want to trust our feelings when they say to pursue something, we should become trustworthy, so that our natures are trustworthy. We do so by developing kinship and trust in God and by building competence (and kinship and trust with God can help build competence.)

Open Stance, Open Situation

Suppose you were given the command from God to "keep your options open". How should you implement it? In general, the message is meant for the recipient, so your natural understanding of that is a good starting place. But if you want an additional thought to consider, you can look at both the idea of the open situation and that of the open stance.

In the open situation, you ensure that you are capable of acting on multiple options, for instance, option A, option B, and option C. In the open stance, on the other hand, you are in a mental state where you could recognize a fourth, previously-unseen option (option D) if it were to present itself. Some commitments (for instance to option X) do not take you out of the open stance, while others do.

Trying to secure options for yourself (seeking an open situation) can take you out of the open stance. Being in the open stance can keep you from seeking to secure options for yourself. Maybe there's a way to have both the open stance and the most open situation at once, or maybe you have to balance one form of openness against the other. You might spend time in one place and then the other.

Do you really have options if you are not yourself? If you are not yourself, you have to do something. You may have an impressive choice of things to choose from (A, B, C, and even D), but you are trapped in the position of having those four options and having to choose between them. Whichever one you end up choosing, you have to -- you don't choose it, you are forced into choosing it, because you are absent from your own life. You are coerced by life to choose, and to choose what you choose, so it wasn't really you who chose. You didn't have any options, despite how diligently you acquired the ability to act on A, B, C, or even D.

Being yourself, and being in the open stance, go together, or are the same thing.

Knowing and Seeking to Know

If you are really open-minded, people can scam you. And you may not be able to commit to what really needs to be done.

But if you close your mind in order to be effective, you participate in another evil, not being aligned with reality.

It's a hard balance. But you can certainly aspire to both know, and seek to know.

Broken and Stuck

I used to have a cassette player when I was younger, maybe a little fancy, that had different modes. It could play in reverse, but there were other modes as well. It's been a while since I had it, so I don't remember specifically what they did. I do remember that there were some switches that, after many years of use (or abuse), were either broken, so you could move them without changing anything, or they were jammed to one setting, I can't remember which -- either way, you couldn't affect the cassette player on that dimension. The cassette player was broken and stuck.

Sometimes things become less stable when they're broken. But other times, being broken makes you more stable, by making you stuck. Maturity is (in part) a process of becoming more stable. But it may come through being broken. There can be an emotional meaning to "broken", a sense of being messed-up. But there's also a functional sense. Things just don't work the way they used to.

When do you need to be right? When you have something valuable to say. Nobody is right about everything, but if you're in an environment where people are trying to shut you up, and will use your mistakes as reason to discount you as a voice, overall, and you have something valuable to say, you had better act like you're right about everything. So you gravitate toward being stuck.

Can you forgive people? You need to be on your own side, if you're in an environment where people are trying to shut you up. You can forgive people on some levels. But like the word "listen", there's a stronger and weaker version of the term "forgive". To listen to someone is to really take into account what they're saying, which in some contexts is to act in accordance with what they say, not just be able to make sense of the words they say. To forgive someone can mean, in its stronger form, "to enter into a relationship as close as or closer than the one that was lost". If you do that, there is no doubt that you have forgiven someone. Do all relationships need to be restored? Maybe not. But if there is a good reason to restore a relationship, can you do that? Or are you stuck, unable to let go of your threatenedness?

Can you deal with your own contradictions? In the old days, we would have called these hypocrisies. Being a hypocrite is too much fun for our days. Nowadays, we are self-contradictory, holding contradictory views, and not living out the views we have, out of fatigue and brokenness. We want to move the switch that makes us turn toward consistency, but as it's broken, it moves too easily, disconnected from the mechanism that really changes us on the inside.

Can you convert to a religion or worldview -- to any religion, or any worldview? Can you see things as being true that you didn't see as being true before? On what level? Can you deeply change as a person, even if it is merely to acknowledge the facts? If your will and intellect can't affect the rest of you, because the switches are broken or stuck, then it is not so easy.

Can you hold to a religion or worldview? You may try to stay in tune with your religion / worldview, by repeatedly moving the switches back to "ADHERING". But if the switch is broken, you may not really adhere, no matter how often you get the switch in the right place.

You can feel stuckness in your brain, a physical sense of rigidity. And the broken switches can be felt. For some people, just recognizing that there are these problems can help to fix them.

Outside Your Life Story

One way to live is to see things in terms of your own life story, your own lived life, and the lived lives of people you know. How will you pay your bills? How will you make it through your old age? How will you be a good friend? How can you present yourself to people without being shamed? How will you fit in? -- everyone else is just living their life stories.

Another way to live is to see that there is something outside your life story, and the life story of anyone you know, which is real whether you acknowledge it or not.

Seeing Potential

People can seem like they don't have potential, or aren't real people. But then you see them in the context where they are most truly themselves (e.g., singing a song they wrote). And then you see how they are deep and worth paying attention to.

It's as though the role society wants everyone to inhabit is that of the "typical" person. No dreams, no depth. But people can escape that role by doing what they love.

A parallel to Gell-Mann Amnesia. People are spun to us according to society's narrative (they spin themselves by adopting the roles we elicit.) We sometimes see people's reality, then when the moment is past, we forget.

Values of Altruists

Values of altruists, based on this thread.

Altruism: concern for other sentient beings. A larger moral circle is better than a smaller one. Components:

other-orientation / relative lack of self-focus

(curiosity is an intellectual version of this)

hope (a fusing of something like optimism with openness to evidence, a kind of trust)

personal connection with reality (maybe a sense of moral obligation, a connection with other being's subjective states, or a taste for a better world)

inclination to work

Support values/practices to the value of altruism:

"moral uncertainty (normative uncertainty in general)" -- helps keep an ethical/social movment from becoming fanatical

(another approach being "you trust God, and thus you know things, and thus you don't act as though God doesn't exist to underpin your well-being and be the authority in your place")

rationality -- disciplined thinking helps find problem areas and address them effectively

outcomes matter

don't only do emotionally appealing things

effective communication -- work with the culture while trying to change it, listen, be disciplined / rational in speech and listening, argue well

against politicization

for working / building rather than fighting / exposing

("exposing": "saying the unhealthy truth for truth's sake", or something like that)

for knowing and self-improvement

Support values that are riskier to promote culture-wide:

some kind of ambition is good

humility is good but trying to maximize humility is bad (being so humble you don't have any confidence in your knowledge prevents action)

courage is good but not foolhardiness

will is good, if it stays in touch with reality

being "real" is good (following through on promises, really having intentions)

personal sufficiency is good (you have enough or are enough to dare reach into someone else's reality)

These are riskier. I think one thing to remember is that ideas are things in people's minds, that culture is really embodied in people, not in words. A lot of culture is in interpersonal contact, which forms the context for ideas. So ideally, if you promote values, you shouldn't just say things, but should instruct people (or be in relationships with people) such that they really understand what you're saying. Genes become phenotype through epigenetics, and concepts become emotions, attitudes, and behaviors through the "epiconceptual". The epiconceptual could be the cultural background that informs how people hear a message (like "yes, this is the moral truth, but we don't actually expect people to live up to the moral truth"), or it could be the subcultural background from a relationship or community that makes it make sense. The practices and expectations of culture / subculture. So values are a thing which are not promoted just by communicators, but also by community-builders, and good communities help make risky but productive words safe to spread.

Prophets Make You Trust

1 Kings 17:

1 Elijah the Tishbite, who was one of the settlers of Gilead, said to Ahab, "As Yahweh, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." 2 Then Yahweh's word came to him, saying, 3 "Go away from here, turn eastward, and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, that is before the Jordan. 4 You shall drink from the brook. I have commanded the ravens to feed you there." 5 So he went and did according to Yahweh's word, for he went and lived by the brook Cherith that is before the Jordan. 6 The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening; and he drank from the brook. 7 After a while, the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land.

8 Yahweh’s word came to him, saying, 9 "Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and stay there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to sustain you."

10 So he arose and went to Zarephath; and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and said, "Please get me a little water in a jar, that I may drink."

11 As she was going to get it, he called to her and said, "Please bring me a morsel of bread in your hand."

12 She said, "As Yahweh your God lives, I don't have anything baked, but only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jar. Behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and bake it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die."

13 Elijah said to her, "Don't be afraid. Go and do as you have said; but make me a little cake from it first, and bring it out to me, and afterward make some for you and for your son. 14 For Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, 'The jar of meal will not run out, and the jar of oil will not fail, until the day that Yahweh sends rain on the earth.'"

15 She went and did according to the saying of Elijah; and she, he, and her household ate many days. 16 The jar of meal didn't run out and the jar of oil didn't fail, according to Yahweh's word, which he spoke by Elijah.

And here, in 1 Kings 18:

1 After many days, Yahweh's word came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, "Go, show yourself to Ahab; and I will send rain on the earth."

2 Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. The famine was severe in Samaria. 3 Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the household. (Now Obadiah feared Yahweh greatly; 4 for when Jezebel cut off Yahweh's prophets, Obadiah took one hundred prophets, and hid them fifty to a cave, and fed them with bread and water.) 5 Ahab said to Obadiah, "Go through the land, to all the springs of water, and to all the brooks. Perhaps we may find grass and save the horses and mules alive, that we not lose all the animals." 6 So they divided the land between them to pass throughout it. Ahab went one way by himself, and Obadiah went another way by himself. 7 As Obadiah was on the way, behold, Elijah met him. He recognized him, and fell on his face, and said, "Is it you, my lord Elijah?"

8 He answered him, "It is I. Go, tell your lord, 'Behold, Elijah is here!'"

9 He said, "How have I sinned, that you would deliver your servant into the hand of Ahab, to kill me? 10 As Yahweh your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my lord has not sent to seek you. When they said, 'He is not here,' he took an oath of the kingdom and nation that they didn't find you. 11 Now you say, 'Go, tell your lord, "Behold, Elijah is here."' 12 It will happen, as soon as I leave you, that Yahweh's Spirit will carry you I don't know where; and so when I come and tell Ahab, and he can't find you, he will kill me. But I, your servant, have feared Yahweh from my youth. 13 Wasn't it told my lord what I did when Jezebel killed Yahweh's prophets, how I hid one hundred men of Yahweh's prophets with fifty to a cave, and fed them with bread and water? 14 Now you say, 'Go, tell your lord, "Behold, Elijah is here".' He will kill me."

15 Elijah said, "As Yahweh of Armies lives, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself to him today." 16 So Obadiah went to meet Ahab, and told him; and Ahab went to meet Elijah.

When you follow the Spirit, you will be led into other people's lives. They have the choice of whether to trust you or not. There is some risk -- in the case of the widow of Zarephath and Obadiah, the risk of death. You sometimes bring with you a confrontation with life and death, just in the course of following God.

Spiritual Reality

EDIT: wording change. Also, this post may imply that Buddhism does not connect with reality as much as (a certain kind of) Christian theism does. I am not sure this means that Buddhists or Christians are in practice any more or less connected with reality than each other. In other words, people don't always live according to their own ideologies. My opinion, as someone who knows something, but not a lot, about Buddhism, is that the ideology of it lends itself to a kind of anti-realism, which might not be what follows from a certain kind of Christian ideology.

Romans 8:

1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don't walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the law couldn't do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace; 7 because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God, for it is not subject to God's law, neither indeed can it be. 8 Those who are in the flesh can't please God.

Thinking like a preacher, I see "You choose which law to live by. You'll always live by a law. The law of fleshly desires, which wants a pound of flesh from everyone who has hurt you, which wants you to be responsible for yourself because there is no God, which demands responsibility of and from others (among other things that we naturally want) -- or the law of the Spirit, which trusts in God, which listens, which does not believe in a strict accounting, at least not one up to humans to understand. To see things as though there is no God is to rebel against God, against the law of the Spirit. It is to reject God."

Thinking like a philosopher, I see a kind of approach to reality here. We think things have natures. Some people don't like that. They say that things have no natures. Nature: A thing has its attributes, its way it is. Anti-nature: Or it doesn't -- we can throw away the strict accounting -- anything goes (at least on some level).

We are tempted to see reality as impersonal. The modernists (nature and nothing but nature) and the postmodernists (anti-nature mixed with nature) both think reality is impersonal. But what if reality is personal? What would that look like? Things might still have natures, but be more like words, spoken with the breath of a person. Or there might be a reality other than nature.

Buddhism may be attractive to some as a way to soften the word "is", which can soften anxiety. "Non-dual" could be a way to soften "is". DBT treats borderline people who have black and white thinking by borrowing from Buddhism's softer "is".

We might see a softening of "is" in "seeing things in a Spiritual way rather than natural way". Things really are a certain way. But the way in which they are is partially unknown to us, is known by God instead. And in order to know something, it's known against the backdrop of our relationships with God. For something to be, it must be by the will of God, according to the legitimacy of God. So for something to really be itself requires that God exist -- and, according to a different logic, it follows that we trust him. And so "is" remains as true and even clear as ever, but a bigger fact -- not really a fact, but a person -- sets it in a different context, allowing us to bear it.

We get wrapped up in our interpretations of what we see. But God has an interpretation of things, which we can hear from him, and by aligning ourselves with him. The Spirit is life and peace.

If reality is fundamentally personal (which is pointed to by Descartes' cogito ergo sum), then we relate to reality, instead of figuring it out, controlling it, possessing it, taking it for granted, denying it, or ignoring it. But the greater personal reality is God, and it's in the context of trust and loyalty toward him that we can rightly approach what is, and thus come to know the truth.

While He is Near

"Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near."

If you want to develop a discipline, get up at 5 AM every morning and do it.

If you want to develop a habit, taste, or delight, catch yourself at a receptive moment and reward it.

If you want to meet a friend in person, you have to do it when they're in town.

You listen to a friend out of discipline and delight, but it is better when there is delight.

You speak to your friend when you do, and say what you say -- that is how he comes to know you. You are not in control of your relationship with God.

Knowing Others Better

It's dangerous to think that you know someone better than they know themselves.

First, it's dangerous if you're wrong. You may see certain aspects of a person clearly, but it's unlikely that you have all the data. So you can possess a distorted view of someone which is very compelling to you. Then, you reflect that view back to them, directly or indirectly.

But also, it's dangerous if you're right. You have a lot of power if you understand someone better than they understand themselves. You'll know better how to defeat them in arguments. You'll approach them with a settled confidence about who they are which they can't contradict -- after all, you're the one with a better command of the facts of who they are. You set yourself up as the trustworthy, wise one, and the wise are those whose decision-making has legitimacy, and thus social power.

When in possession of this power, you can put the other person in a dependent state, setting their horizons within the bounds of your vision. This can prevent them from being the person that God wants them to be.

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Which is better, to know someone accurately, or to share the same reality as them? People who share the same reality can be friends. So you make the choice (or life makes it for you): to see things your way (to see the facts) or to share a journey with someone else.

If you know someone better than they do, you don't need to listen to them anymore. Speech is how we create reality, how we express ourselves.

Shared Vision

We have a tendency to think that things that all of us can see are more real than things that only one person can see. This protects us from wild ideas and claims about reality, and also from the insights of sensitive people.