Category Archives: Philosophy
Chase your tail
Joseph Campbell’s advice to “follow your bliss” is to humans what the advice “chase your tail” would be to dogs.
It’s an enjoyable way to get active, get dizzy and get nowhere. And it’s advice that both species are eager to take, because it’s what they were naturally inclined to do, anyway. And isn’t that our favorite advice?
Pluralistic insight
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
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.
Two offenses
Two irreconcilable forms of offense:
- The alien mind seeking understanding, a process which inflicts anxiety on the understander.
- The refusal to experience the anxiety required to understand an alien mind.
To the economist
At the root of quantification is qualities, and behind the qualities is reality that transcends those qualities. When you look reality in the eye, it looks right back into your eyes regardless of whether you respect this reality as something that counts.
Yet another attempt at Levinas
Whenever I try to read Levinas I have two reactions: first, an immediate relief in reading someone who shares my understanding; but second, a lingering anxiety that pervades and darkens every moment and detail of my life.
I have had to abandon books that were beyond my intellectual limits, but Levinas is the one author who pushes me over my moral limits.
Life is unfair
This scale is an attempt to diagram a framework I posted to Facebook.
Lately, I’ve been hearing more and more people declaring that “Life is unfair.” I actually grew up hearing that.
I’m starting to believe this statement is the essence of right-wing politics. Degree of renunciation of fairness is what defines the right-wing spectrum:
Centrism views fairness as one legitimate political goal, but acknowledges practical limits to the degree of achievable fairness. Centrism sees over-reaching attempts at fairness to be artifacts of naive partiality with distorted self-serving conceptions of fairness. To the degree a centrist leans right, he sees increasing levels of unfairness as inevitable and acceptable.
Middle right believes that fairness should not enter the discussion. Fairness is an inappropriate goal for politics, and an inadequate framework for thinking about it. Politics should be thought about in terms of other dynamics (such as economics). These dynamics naturally produce a healthy equilibrium which are in fact the best possible political outcomes. The distorting lens of “fairness” demands that we “fix” precisely that which is not broken (and conversely, that we preserve the hacks intended to produce fairness, but which destroy natural equilibrium).
Hard right believes that inequality is necessary — that establishing proper rank is required for the health of a society. The strongest, or wisest, or smartest or the most righteous should have more power than the weak, foolish, unintelligent, vicious masses.
I can see the self-consistent logic and validity of these positions. But as a left-leaning person, I believe the elimination of fairness from political discourse is a disaster. To say “life is unfair” is to misrepresent a moral intention as a natural fact. It pretends to say “perfect fairness is not an achievable goal” but really means: “I have no intention of treating you fairly.” I do not believe I can credibly ask a person to trust me if I do not intend to treat them fairly.
But, with all that being said, here is a troubling question: can right-wingers actually trust the left to treat them fairly? Because being fair means making the question “what is fair?” an open question for discussion, and I am not at all sure this is the case with many Clinton and Sanders supporters, who seem to have already decided unilaterally for themselves what is fair.
When asked for the left half of the scale, I added:
Hard left wants to maximize fairness by ensuring that everyone has exactly the same resources. Middle left believes politics is essentially about achieving maximum fairness. Centrism, as it leans leftward, sees fairness as one key condition of freedom for all. Fairness and freedom will never be perfect, but we are obligated to pursue it.
Buber on love of creator/creation
“…Real relationship to God cannot be achieved on earth if real relationships to the world and to mankind are lacking. Both love of the Creator and love of that which He has created are finally one and the same.”
I do not care what you think
It is easy to disregard what someone thinks if that person lacks the resources to make you feel the consequences of your disrespect and disregard. We only say “I don’t give a shit how you feel” to people who are powerless either to help us or to harm us.
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A person or a group we treat as a powerless nobody will seek opportunities to return and confront us as a powerful somebody — as somebody who can command our attention, or our respect, or — and God help us if it comes to this — to make us feel what it is like to be a powerless nobody.
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Perhaps the biggest difference between left and right comes down to the question: Which segment of the poor and powerless mass deserves to be courted and which deserves to be despised?
Liber’al
I like to see the word “liberal” as a contraction of Liberty for All: liber’al.
Galut
New favorite word: galut. It names the pit in my stomach.
On Jewish conversion
I’ve been asked: “If your faith is essentially Jewish, why would you need to go through a formal conversion? Aren’t you already Jewish?”
My answer is: “Because that very Jewish faith tells me that I will be Jewish only when Jews recognize me as Jewish.”
A Jewish faith is not a faith of comprehension of truths. Judaism is not essentially a “belief system.” Jewish faith is orientation toward what transcends one’s own finitude in time, in space and in understanding — calling for a whole-being response: whole mind, whole heart, whole strength. And the faith is oriented toward reality that responds back. Judaism is radically and actively mutual.
I’ve been asked: “Why undergo all that arbitrary ritualistic rigmarole of Jewish conversion?”
My answer is: “Undergoing conversion is my way of honoring the priniciple that the most important things we can learn are arbitrary until suddenly and miraculously they stop being arbitrary to us. These rituals might have enormous meaning that I will understand and re-understand later. Until then, participation in these rituals is, for me a ritual of demonstrating my teachability. That’s the first part. The second part is the blunt fact that this is what it takes to recognized as Jewish by the Jewish community, and even if I do not understand the requirement, I respect it as something I do not understand. In undergoing conversion I am making a sacrifice of intellectual self-mastery to the transcendence of other understandings and to other people. Compared to what was asked of Abraham, it is a minuscule sacrifice.”
Diagnostic code
If someone tells me that they are distressed, I tend to believe it.
If they tell me why they are distressed, I tend to question it.
If I catch myself believing that I know why they are distressed before I talk with them, I make myself disbelieve it.
Humility
We people are sparks inclined to mistake ourselves for galaxies. There is truth in the indentification of spark with galaxy, but a truth is true only when its limits are observed. Humility is the observation of this particular truth, the fundamental truth of relationship between finite part and infinite whole.
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Humility is proactive humiliation. Do it yourself or it will be done to you.
Torn
What do I think about this or that controversy? I’m torn — on principle. If I am not torn yet, I have more learning to do.
Going first
Being morally responsible means going first. Trying first. Opening first. Listening first. Repenting first. Giving first. Disarming first. Showing goodwill first. Seeking forgiveness first. Acting first.
We can speculate on how others will respond — whether they will or won’t reciprocate, cooperate, collaborate, exploit or humiliate us — but we cannot really know what is possible until someone actually makes that first move toward mutuality.
Being morally responsible means being that person.
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Being morally responsible means acting on faith that other people do not live inside our own minds. They can shock us with the reality of who they are and how much it differs from our ideas of them.
The varieties of othering experience
Othering occurs in a variety of forms which can look highly dissimilar or even opposite.
There’s a complacent incurious othering: Those others are not really part of my life. I don’t know them, they’re not my problem, I don’t know how to help, and I don’t even know if I can help.
There’s an objective othering: Those others have different characteristics from us, which can be studied and comprehended factually.
Another objective othering: I have studied those others and concluded that their problems are self-inflicted. They must solve their own problems.
There’s a smug and superior othering: We, unlike those others, are moral or talented or informed or enlightened, etc.
There’s a hostile othering: Those others want to do us harm, and will do so if they get the chance.
There’s a resentful othering: The principle pain in my life would not have happened if I were one of those others.
Resentful othering can evolve into a vengeful othering: The principle pain in my life, which is the pain of my people, would not have occurred if it were not for those others.
There’s a post-liberal othering: Those others engage in othering me, and I have found that I cannot avoid doing the same — at least as long as they persist in their othering. Perhaps othering is unavoidable. Perhaps the conceit of overcoming othering is a tactic for preserving the status quo.
These are dissimilar in ways: they are the products of different power relations.
However, they are alike in that they all lead away from mutuality, further from dialogical understanding and toward reciprocal dehumanization, force and dehumanizing counter-force.
Mutuality
It is important to distinguish between feeling as though you are member of a community because you share its values and beliefs, and actually becoming a member of that community by mutually acknowledging shared values and beliefs with fellow members. This is true of communities of dozens, hundreds, thousands or millions, and it is true of communities as small as two, such as friendships and marriages. Community is essentially mutual.
Similarly, there is a difference between forgiveness that involves making peace with estrangement with an alienated friend or loved one and the deeper forgiveness of mutual reconciliation. Most feelings of alienation come from a sense that one’s reality has not been acknowledged — from a sense that mutuality is lacking. Reconciliation is restoration of mutuality. Sometimes this is not possible (yet), and we do have to make peace with that fact in unilateral forgiveness, but we should know and feel the difference between this and true mutual forgiveness.
Mutual relationships transcend individuality and that’s what makes them sacred.
This view feels Jewish to me, and when I articulate it I want to be Jewish.
The responsible and the free
It is easy for those who accept responsibility, especially those who feel unable to avoid accepting it, to resent those who have embraced irresponsibility and who consequently experience an ecstatic freedom. For the latter, “the free”, this is an accomplishment, a liberation or redemption won through courageous insight; but for the former, “the responsible”, this is a seizure made through ignorant luck, willful contempt, or both fused in complacent incuriosity — all subsidized by the responsible.
It is hard to get outside of these two ethical perspectives, or rather this one ethical perspective composed of two interlocked conflicting judgments. From any point between these two poles, the two poles define the ethical gamut.