All posts by anomalogue

Us here

Philosophy

Most of the world sees things in terms of us-here and them-there. We who live here are good, and they who live there are wicked. We are blessed to have been born here among the good and to have been taught the absolute truth.

The other part of the world — much smaller — sees things in terms of us-cosmopolitan and them-insular. We who are cosmopolitan understand that where someone was born and what they were taught is the absolute truth does not matter. What matters is whether a person has understood that the unexamined, uncritical belief that one is good and knows the truth is not a sign of knowing but of ignorance and will lead not to good, but to evil. We must stay alert to the fact that we ourselves are vulnerable to playing the evil role unless we stay aware of how evil actually works, and that evil works precisely through our own certainty that we are right.

This certainty — this moralistic pridefulness — will lead the wives and children and grandchildren of American soldiers who bravely fought and defeated totalitarian movements in Europe and in the Pacific to enthusiastically support totalitarians in their own land — totalitarians who promise the same returns to national greatness, the same disgust toward liberals and intellectuals, the same rise of the common folk to take back their government, the same mass conspiracy thinking. Because their families believe with all their hearts that it was Japanese or Germans or Italians that their husbands, fathers or grandfathers fought — missing entirely the fact that it was an eternal evil they fought — an eternal evil ready to seduce any person in any land professing any faith — just as long as they are prideful enough to believe they possess the knowledge of good and therefore impossible to seduce. They give themselves to the strong man who says the words they love to hear and never allow themselves to suspect who has entered their bed. They betray the principles they claim as the basis of their virtue — but it feels so right, it can’t be wrong. 

Contained and comprehended

Ideas


If Levinas is right — and I believe he is — it is no accident that the person I know whose formula for intellectual victory was to “contain and comprehend” the other was also among the most amoral people I’ve known. Whether he behaved admirably or despicably, the only judgment that weighed on him was how his soul experienced his own soul as he acted before it.

Neither argument nor morality are about self-satisfaction of reason, and when this basic fact is misunderstood all other highfalutin “spiritual” concepts and practices become solipsistic puppet play. 

You cannot vault over the ordinary transcendence of other people’s minds and arrive at some communion with superhuman Transcendence. The failure to make the leap, and the fall into the abyss of immanent dreaming of transcendence is “experienced” by oneself as spiritual success.

The desire to reduce all phenomena to the terms of self and to protect these terms from whatever attempts to impinge by effecting repentence (metanoia) is, if not the origin of all evil, at least one key tributary. 

Two kinds of othering

Ideas

According to Wikipedia “when the term the Other is used as the verb Othering, it labels (distinguishes and identifies) someone as belonging to a category defined as the Other. The practice of Othering is the exclusion of persons who do not fit the norm of the social group, which is a version of the Self.”

It is interesting that of all words, we use this word to designate reduction of other individuals to mere instances of categories, which are mental extensions of one’s own self. It is precisely otherness — that of their being that transcends our minds — that we deny others. Seen this way, it would make more sense to call it Selfing.

It is also interesting that many so-called “religious people” are the quickest to reduce everything to the terms of their doctrine, which, contrary to their doctrines, is precisely denial of transcendence, not its affirmation. The greatest reduction of all is the ultimate Other, God, who becomes a personal possession — a mental idol worshiped as God in place of God.

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I see two categories of othering. The usual negative othering (or anti-othering), such as racism, sexism or xenophobia is contemptuous disregard of those categorized as instances of despised groups. The disregard will be underpinned by different styles of justification, usually essentialist on the illiberal right and sociological on the illiberal left.

Positive othering (or philo-othering) is the same reduction of individuals to instances of categories (and in the process, depriving the other of otherness), but the value assigned to the other is affirmative. This process still denies the transcendent reality of the affirmed other, but awards the dehumanized other favorable status. By this way of thinking, reverse-racism should not be used to designate hatred of white people by black people (that’s simply racism), but rather that strong inclination of white leftists to view all people classifiable as “people of color” in a favorable light, instead of approaching individuals as the individuals they are.

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Liberalism seeks conditions to allow each individual to self-classify — to choose they groups they represent — and to adopt whatever intersectional identity they wish to have, not those imposed by others. As long as these classifications are imposed, liberalism still has work to do. It is unclear to me that philo-othering or affirming equal-but-opposite anti-othering is helpful to this cause.

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Fundamentalist philo-othering of God denies God’s reality at least as much as atheist anti-othering of God. When I hear debates between fundamentalists and atheists see anti-otherers and philo-otherers collaborating on a worldview where religion has no place.

Dying of disrespect

Ideas

Americans generally believe it is good not not care what other people think.

Saying “I don’t care what you think” is often seen as a sign of independence, toughness and spirit. We say it with a tone of pride, as if we have demonstrated a virtue. When we are bothered that someone thinks poorly of us, we scold ourselves for caring so much what others think. We shouldn’t care about that.

But not caring what others think is a formula of disrespect — almost its definition. Look at the etymology of re-spect: back + look. If I look at you and I see someone who looks back and sees me, I respect you. If I look at you and see something whose seeing is irrelevant, I disrespect you.

When we say someone has disrespected us, what we mean is that they have *demonstrated* disrespect. But the disrespect was there prior to the act, and the suspicion that we are not respected is profoundly alienating. The sin of disrespect is committed in the heart before it is committed with word or action.

I find this exaltation of disrespect alarming. I am alarmed not only because disrespect is painful to the disrespected and degrading to the disrespectful, but because the institutions most vital and essential to our way of life are all ones that depend on respect to function and flourish. How is it that a nation so utterly dependent on respect has embraced disrespect as admirable? Can we really adhere to an ethic of disrespect and hope to thrive as a nation?

If you doubt that our national institutions all assume and require respect, here is a list of some key examples:

  • Our market, at least when it functions properly, is a place where companies work to develop products and services that customers prefer over other possibilities. When competition gets fierce enough, companies will go to extreme lengths to figure out exactly how their customers see the world in order to do a better job of appealing to them. This is an extreme kind of respect.
  • Our democracy, when it functions properly, forces candidates to figure out what their constituents want from them and to explain to them how they intend to deliver results. The incumbents must demonstrate how they have delivered or explain persuasively why they did not deliver or risk being voted out of office. The candidates must care how their constituents think and what they think of them. In a healthy democracy, disrespect costs a politician their job.
  • Our judiciary system also requires persuasion. A lawyer attempting to persuade a jury of peers is by proxy attempting to persuade the public of the truth of her case. Again: respect.
  • Our legislative process, despite what so many Americans have come to think is a collaborative design process performed legislators of differing opinions. All design processes require extreme respect among collaborators, each of whom looks for novel resolutions to apparent obstacles which permit miraculous possibilities of alignment where before there was only mutual objection and frustration. But our public — who believe a good politician is one who already knows what is best, who grandstands on Uncompromising Principles, and obliterates opposition through sheer force of will, and who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of it — elects leaders who exemplify the disrespect ethic, effectively hurling human monkey-wrenches into our delicate political mechanisms. Is it any wonder things have stopped working in Washington? And it seems that many of us think the solution to this problem is to find new, even more potent forms of disrespect so overpowering that they can just sweep aside what remains and get things done autocratically in the manner of a sole proprietor of a private business, who calls all the shots, makes hard calls and… doesn’t have to care what anyone thinks about it. “My way or the highway.” (Where is the highway in a nation? Deportation? Jail?)

These are some of our key liberal-democratic institutions, but it is not even a complete list.

Can we  afford to continue to exalt disrespect? Is it possible America’s worst troubles are symptoms of disrespect? Are we perhaps even dying of disrespect?

And can an individual citizen do anything about this?

I think much of the damage is done individual-to-individual. Like it or not, when we converse with other people, we represent our political positions. When we show someone disrespect, we do so on behalf of who they think we represent. When you converse as a member of a political party, a religion, a race, a profession, a generation, a philosophy, a stance on some issue, or whatever — you represent a group. You become a concrete experience — a touch-point, as we call it in the design business — of something otherwise abstract and intangible. To represent your group is an enormous responsibility if you think about it.

If you are persuaded at all by what I am saying, you might want to meditate on three questions:

  1. How often do you catch yourself admiring disrespect?
  2. Have you reflected on whether disrespect is a good thing to admire?
  3. How many times a day do you feel or show disrespect, versus feel and show respect — especially to those who disagree with you?

I think this is the most important thing I have to say right now. Struggling with disrespect and overcoming it is more complex and difficult than it seems on its face — it is, in fact, a discipline on the order of religion — but simply questioning the ethic of disrespect is a crucial first step.

Worldview referendum

Ideas

Our national elections are no longer about which person is most qualifed to lead or which candidate’s policies will work best in our pluralistic but unified nation. 

Increasingly, our elections are referendums to determine whose worldview defines our national identity, and consequently which of us are real Americans and which of us are imposters who wish to degrade or pervert it. 

Darkness, blindness, distraction, obscurity, remoteness

Ideas

Perception can miss a reality because of darkness, blindness, distraction, hiddenness, or remoteness. 

  • Darkness is obsurement due to absence of medium. Absence of light makes dark. A vacuum makes silent. 
  • Blindness is a failure of reception. Failure of sight is blindness. Failure of hearing is deafness. 
  • Distraction is a failure of attention. The eye is stimulated but vision doesn’t see. The ear is stimulated, but hearing doesn’t hear. 
  • Hiddenness is a concealment of a reality by other realities. An object is hidden behind another object. A sound is masked by noise. 
  • Remoteness is a vanishing in distance. A faraway object is too tiny to see. A faraway sound is too faint to hear.

Understanding can also miss a reality because of darkness, blindness, distraction, obscurity, or remoteness. 

  • Darkness is an absence of medium — ignorance — lacking language or concepts needed to comprehend. 
  • Blindness is a failure of reception — stupidity — mental weakness. 
  • Distraction is a failure of attention — inattention — non-detection of patterns and connections. 
  • Hiddenness is a concealment of realities by other realities — confusion –interference between unconnected concepts and confusion of categories.
  • Remoteness is a concealment by distance — incuriosity — failure to see relevance. 

Reading together

Hermeneutics, Judaism

Intimacy is made possible by shared experience.

Some tangible forms of shared experience are: shared language, shared history, shared spaces, shared relationships, shared institutions, shared customs, shared beliefs.

Less tangible, but perhaps even more crucial forms of shared experience are: shared understandings, shared interpretations, shared tastes, shared expectations.

One of the finest ways to achieve these latter shared understandings is the supremely inter-revelatory act of reading together.

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In Torah Study, the personalities gathered in the room sparkle against the ground of the text. Insight by insight, the flat black sky deepens into limitless space as it fills up with stars.

Transfinition

Judaism, Metaphysics

When I say that some fact is “definitely true” it means that I cannot conceive how it could be otherwise. Sometimes, however, unexpectedly and shockingly infinity will demonstrate that reality is otherwise than how I thought, despite the fact that this event was inconceivable. 

The very ground upon which things are defined shifts, relationships between thing and thing, each and everything are instantaneously renegotiated. Everything and every thing is somehow different while remaining the same. All this belongs to the phenomenon of paradigm shift. 

But let’s for a moment turn away from the things and from everything, and look into that blind void from which this shock emerges, ex nihilo. Let’s stare into this scotoma, where nothing exists, but also where nothing is missing — because it is from here that metaphysics pours out fresh reality. It becomes visible only through shock of revelation. 

It is from here, from this — from Whom? — that I relearn the difference between “everything” and “infinity”. 

But however many times I am shifted and shocked, I remain finite, despite all appearances and temptations. But each time, my “everything” enlarges, becomes more flexible, grows more permeable, that is, if I can continue to want and to welcome God, dread and all. 

Today “transfinition” seems the right word for this kind of event, where definitional fields shift, changing the meaning of everything as a whole and every thing in part, and implying the permanent possibility of other shifts. This keeps us aware of the radical difference between truth and reality, and gives us our closest approximation of understanding the meaning of infinity. We know infinity through transfinitition. We also believe in the reality of pluralism by way of transfinition. 

Or so things seem to me, at this point in my ongoing history of shifts. 

Trapped in transitivity

Ideas

The root cause of today’s conflicts is what has been the root cause of conflict since the dawn of human existence: we do not know how to relate ourselves intellectually, practically or morally to that whom we are not. We do not understand metaphysical relation. 

Because we do not understand metaphysical relation we do not know how to think metaphysics, and we make the dire category mistake of thinking about metaphysics. Because… how else do you think anything besides thinking about it? And with mistaking failure to answer for receiving an answer we are trapped in transitivity, like a chicken trapped behind a chalkline. We do not know how to know otherwise, so we know the only way we know how, and that way is utterly inadequate. We cannot step over this chalkline, so we stand with our backs to it and look in the other direction. 

That is, we turn our backs on God. 

That is, we succumb to fundamentalism, that miscarriage of religion that cannot imagine it is not the epitome of religion. 

I am paraphrasing Levinas again. 

Pluralistic insight

Politics, Pragmatism

We use whatever concepts we have available to us to understand our experiences. When facing an unfamiliar situation, we intuitively choose a conceptualization that seems to fit in an attempt to make sense of it. And if the first pick fails to give us a handle on the situation, we might “try on” another — if one is available to us.

Having a larger conceptual repertoire gives us more options for understanding. It also raises our expectations with regard to conceptual fit. Perhaps most importantly, the practice of trying out different ways of conceiving subjects us to first-hand experience of contasting experiences of understanding, which produces the insight we conceptualize as pluralism: multiple approaches to understanding always exist, even though it seems only one truth is possible.

Inducing the pluralistic insight, and equipping citizens with a large repertoire of concepts for reaching understandings satisfactory to the greatest possible number of people is the most important function of education in a liberal-democratic society.

Those who make use of a limited set of concepts for understanding the world will be accustomed to making do with semi-adequate understandings. They lack all experience of pluralism: the world they experience is a mysterious and arbitrary world where thinking is barely relevant because it rarely does much good.

One strong argument for public education is ensuring children are taught by teachers who have a reasonably large conceptual repertoire to teach. You cannot give what you do not have. Or to put it differently “if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” — usually the ditch of fundamentalism.

 

 

 

 

Channeling La Rochefoucauld

Ethics

Being offended offends less than giving offense. This can be seen as a kind desire to not cause others pain, or it can be seen as a narcissistic desire to be viewed as blameless.

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Long version:

A morally undeveloped boor who gives nothing but expects nothing from others can certainly be offensive, but be is not nearly as offensive as someone who gives but also expects things from others who cannot or will not give it. While former gives others no thought, the latter gives others unwanted thought, and that is worse.

 

Thaumatolatry

Judaism

Thaumatolatry – Worship or undue admiration of wonderful or miraculous things.

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My religiosity is non-thaumatolatrous. God, being infinite, is present in all kinds of mundane miracles, like generosity, scientific research and conversation. I don’t rule out apparently magical miracles — I just don’t think they are the right direction to point our worship. The craving or fixation on that which seems to defy the laws of nature show that we’ve failed to recognize (or sustain recognition of) the significance of reality’s pervasive transcendence.