I wrote this a little while ago, had some dialog with neo-neocon about it (it touches on her domain pretty closely, and I believe she will have a parallel piece soon), and then two things combined to get me to pull it out, add a few things, and put it out here for discussion.
Obviously, one of the things was the murder in Seattle, in which a – troubled – young Muslim man shot up a Jewish Federation office in Seattle; an office much like the one where my mom used to work here in Los Angeles.
Another was an interview by Andrew Cochran at the Counterterrorism Blog with filmmaker Pierre Rehov, who just finished a documentary on shahids (suicide bombers).
…I became fascinated with the personalities of those who had committed those crimes, as they were described again and again by their victims. Especially the fact that suicide bombers are all smiling one second before they blow themselves up.
In my original post on Seattle, I asked if the assailant had been a “mucker” – someone who simply went amok from the strains of modern life (the word comes from John Brunner’s great ripoff of Dos Passos – “Stand on Zanzibar”). In Brunner’s 2010, muckers are common enough that they are discussed like the weather.I continue to focus on this issue because I believe that while we have to continue to degrade the military forces arrayed against us, the core battle is against an ideological movement, and that when we can defang the movement, defeating the military will be No Big Thing.
I think we need to understand this phenomenon better, and while there are obviously political understandings that are critical to that, there are also psychological ones as well. I’ve argued for along time that the mindset we see in Islamist rage isn’t only present there, but is present in a wider – if less intense – form here in the West as well. I’ve called it ‘Bad Philosophy’, and suggested that building a ‘Good Philosophy’ is as important as building weapons and armies. Maybe more so.
I’m going to ask for all of your help on this, because I’m going to wind up walking closer to an edge of appropriateness than I’m necessarily comfortable, and if we take a wrong step in the comments, I’ll wind up stepping over the edge and have to pull back.
I’m going to talk about Bad Philosophy, violence and the threats of violence and suicide. I’m trying to make an abstract philosophical point, not to comment on the specifics of threats, violent acts, or specific suicides. If you comment, and it’s specific to a person, ask yourself a simple question: Would you email your comment to the mother of the person you’re commenting about? Would you do it if you liked the mother? If the answer is no, don’t post it. If I think the answer is no, I’ll reserve the right to yank the comment. If I can’t control the comments, I’ll close comments entirely. It’s my party, and in this case you’ll drink what I pour; BYOB isn’t going to apply here.
Bear with me while I explain.
I assume you’ve been following the recent and ongoing hoo-hah over at Jeff Goldstein’s place, in which a – deranged – commenter goes off the deep end, and winds up quitting her job and moving to Eugene. No, really.
So I started putting clips together about blog-threats, and went back to the one time I’ve been threatened – as Rob Lyman pointed out, being the Armed Liberal may cut down on that kind of chatter – back in 2002.
PLEASANT SURPRISES
I’ve harshed Hesiod and Sullywatch over language and tone, and while I’ve been impressed at the work Charles at LGF does in bringing Middle Eastern news to light, I’ve got issues with his comments section; the omnipresent tone of Arab-bashing and chest-beating, at a time when we need to proceed with determination, care, and seriousness is part of what led to my ‘thought experiment’ below (and which I’ll follow up on as time allows today).
Then this charming set of comments over at Aaron’s ‘Uppity Negro’ blog was pointed out to me:
[sorry, crabby] I feel a collecting-spree coming on, & I’m afraid Armed Liberal’s blinky, doe-eyes are looking mighty fine. Can I have’em, Aaron? Can I?
Posted by: Neogrammarian on September 16, 2002 05:21 PMAs long as I can have the ears.
Those necklaces of them look quite fetching.
Posted by: Aaron on September 16, 2002 05:41 PMSo, trying to figure out how to comment on them, I can only think of one response…molon labe, kids, molon labe.
[a few folks wanted to know what ‘molon labe’ meant…I added a link]
So I wander over to Aaron’s blog to see what he’s up to lately, and discover to my shock that he’s dead. And I Google a bit, and discover that he’s likely a suicide.
And, sadly, I go “huh”. And I wonder about the role of this kind of undifferentiated social rage in suicide, and further the connection between the kind of philosophical anger I talk about when I discuss Bad Philosophy and real anger you see here expressed in the world – and that ultimately may be expressed toward oneself.
I’ve talked about “Bad Philosophy” in the past. Let me recap:
ROMANTICISM AND TERRORISM – AND A QUOTE FROM ISAIAH BERLIN:
You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and vulgar about it. The very notion of idealism, not in its philosophical sense, but in the ordinary sense in which we use it, that is to say the state of mind of a man who is willing to sacrifice a great deal for principles or some conviction, who is not prepared to sell out, who is prepared to go to the stake for something which he believes, because he believes in it – this attitude was relatively new. What people admired was wholeheartedness, sincerity, purity of soul, the ability and readiness to dedicate yourself to your ideal, no matter what it was.
No matter what it was: that is the important thing.
IS THE WAR ON TERROR THE WAR ON BAD PHILOSOPHY? with a quote from Baudrillard:
Continuing an analysis developed over many years, Baudrillard sees the power of the terrorists as lying in the is symbolism of this slaughter. Not merely the reality of death, but a sacrificial death that challenges the whole system. Where the past revolutionary sought to conduct a struggle of real forces in the context of ideology and politics, the new terrorist mounts a powerful symbolic challenge, which, when combined with high-tech resources, constitutes an unprecedented assault on an over-sophisticated, vulnerable West.
WHAT BAD PHILOSOPHY LOOKS LIKE with quotes from a Salon reader:
When the towers started collapsing and all chaos broke loose, I felt actual excitement. Here was an event that broke banality. Finally, here was something meaningful. I had grown so tired of the meaningless fluff our continent had become so enamored with. Here was an issue of raw emotions. I was glad that this was happening to snap people back into reality, to snap them back to mortality. My last sinful thought was that of genocide — lets just send nuclear missiles to all of the Middle East and let it be done once and for all.
– Name withheld
These are all positions that come from a kind of spiritual hole, and seek to fill it with strong – even violent – action, as the purest expression of a self that is somehow battened down by the world.
I’ve believed for a while that the violent strains in Islamism come more from an infection with this Western disease than from intrinsic issues within Islam – although those issues may provide a fertile ground for the infection.
I don’t think – and have never thought – that it is limited to Islam, though. I think there is a strong strain of it in the West as well. And recent events have brought that to mind.
Because in reading the fascinating train wreck of a public life – the one being done by Deborah Frisch, lately of the University of Arizona, and headed for the Twilight Zone…I came on this (linked from the comments here):
I am about as unanonymous as they get, aardvark.
My name is Deborah Frisch. I live in Tucson, Arizona. I teach in the psychology department at the YOUkneeversity of AIRYzona.
You want to come find me, see that I’m real, hold a .357 magnum in my face, i say:
BRING IT ON.
Posted by: Deborah Frisch | Jan 3, 2005 8:02:40 PM
Posted by: DF
One day, some cheeky blogger is going to be offed by a psychopathic blogger. Will it be a scuffle@left2right? idunno.
i hope to hell it ain’t me, i gotta tell ya.
but i feel kind of guilty for not blowing myself up on the steps of the lincoln memorial when i lived in d.c. while i was doing out pork for sam..so in a way, i WANT some futhermucker A-hole to off me because i pissed him off in the blogosphere.
BRING IT ON, FUTHERMUCKERS!!!!!!!!
Posted by: DF | Jan 3, 2005 8:06:43 PM
And I start puzzling a few things together…
I do think there is a connection – between a bright, well-schooled but socially inept person like Dr. Frisch (whose name, as Goldstein has promised, will now become an Internet verb) and her fantasies of self- annihilation, and the forces that would lead a well-educated, middle class man like Mohammed Atta to commit suicide in the loudest, most attention-getting way he could envision.
Does this mean I think Dr. Frisch is a terrorist, or even remotely likely to actually be one? No. Let’s be clear and absolute about this; I’m using her public meltdown as an example of something I think is more common – if less extremely visible – than we expect, and that is a part of the social movement – a part ofthe intellectual fashion – that I think presents serious problems.
So there’s a process visible here that’s worth looking at with some interest, and she’s a handy example. In my view, it starts here:
The USA is a sick, diseased, cancer, blight on the earth. This is a fact. You guys are in denial about it and hate the fact that I’ve got the chutzpah to hang here and tell it like it is.
OK, I’ll disagree about the U.S. – but the interesting thing to me is this. If this how you feel about where you live – if your life is dependent on this blight, and you’re inextricably a part of it – what’s the logical reaction?
I’ve got to believe that it’s rage, and a rage that really, really wants to pierce the banality of things with violent, orgasmic action. And it’s a rage of the privileged, because it is the more bitter rage of the child against the parent; rage against that which made you, which comforted you, and which you know you owe a debt to, but somehow can’t seem to agree to pay.
This is entirely consistent with studies that have shown that terrorists preponderantly come from more advantaged, rather than less advantaged, backgrounds. In The New Republic, Kreuger and Maleckova write:
The evidence that we have assembled and reviewed suggests that there is little direct connection between poverty, education, and participation in or support for terrorism. Indeed, the available evidence indicates that compared with the relevant population, participants in Hizbollah’s militant wing in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Lebanon were at least as likely to come from economically advantaged families and to have a relatively high level of education as they were to come from impoverished families without educational opportunities. We should caution, however, that the evidence we have considered is tentative due to data limitations. In addition, our focus has been primarily on the Middle East, so our conclusions may not generalize to other regions or circumstances.
Still, less quantitative studies of participants in a variety of forms of terrorism in several different settings have reached a conclusion similar to ours. We are particularly struck by Charles Russell and Bowman Miller’s work in this regard. In 1983, to derive a profile of terrorists, they assembled demographic information on more than three hundred fifty individuals engaged in terrorist activities in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East from 1966 to 1976 based on newspaper reports. Their sample consisted of individuals from eighteen revolutionary groups known to engage in urban terrorism, including the Red Army in Japan, the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Red Brigades in Italy, and the People’s Liberation Army in Turkey. Russell and Miller found that “the vast majority of those individuals involved in terrorist activities as cadres or leaders is quite well educated. In fact, approximately two-thirds of those identified terrorists are persons with some university training ,university graduates or postgraduate students.” They also report that more than two-thirds of arrested terrorists “came from the middle or upper classes in their respective nations or areas.”
And this process, this rage against the unsatisfying world, is the process we have to break – and we’ll only break it by providing a better process for these privileged sons and daughters to be a part of.
Our armies may buy us space to do this, but until we do, we’ll live in a false peace.
You’re kind of all over the road here, AL, and I’m not sure where the specific focus is.
Here [http://canisiratus.bl*gspot.com/2006/02/diary-of-blue-state-of-mind.html] is my attempt to seriously confront the bad philosophy of one particular blogger, a diarist at Daily Kos who was apparently barred for a diary called “I Hope Cheney’s Shooting Victim Dies”.
I concluded that his personal philosophy is characterized by the following:
1. An obsession with politics, and the belief that politics is a universal philosophy superior to all non-political ideas, including moral philosophy (politicism).
(The diarist’s inability to exclude politics from any aspect of his life caused him great personal unhappiness, which he described in anguished detail.)
2. Belief that reality is dominated and defined by evil forces, which implies that the only possible existential position is one based on disgust, despair, and hatred.
3. Fatalism. The future holds inevitable tragedy, partly because the diarist has such narrowly-defined expectations that he can never be satisfied.
4. Collectivism, not just in the political-economic sense, but in the sense that denies the value and meaning of individual human life.
5. Anti-democratic and anti-rational thinking. The diarist is deeply frustrated because he is convinced that people who disagree with him are either evil or brainwashed, and he has no faith in the power of persuasion.
6. His beliefs lead him to psychopathic conclusions, even if they don’t necessarily logically imply such conclusions.
I won’t go into my long disclaimer about the danger of analyzing people you don’t personally know, based on what they write on the internet. But if this person’s cyber-existence is anything like his real existence, I would think he was at high risk of suicide. Violence, despair, and hatred are his constant muses.
This might seem trite, but here’s the root of it:
“If you don’t stand for something then you’ll fall for anything.”
The ultimate destination of post-modernism and the fashion of deconstruction, is either hedonism, suicide or violence. How could it possiblly be otherwise?
I agree that he’s all over the road, but this is a very difficult subject. If he could come up with a firm, clear answer, he would change the world.
No, scratch that. AL’s trying to come up with the question. Bill Whittle’s trying to come up with the answer. Basically, AL’s trying to figure out what drives people to seek destruction. Bill’s trying to figure out how to drive people to be constructive.
I nearly had this pinned down in an argument with a very intelligent and articulate member of the far left. I asked him what kept him in the U.S. and fighting for his beliefs if he thought the system was as fundamentally flawed as he said it was. Unfortunately, he explicitly refused to answer my question.
I think most dreams of destruction (anarchist/leftist, Christian Eschatological, Deep Ecology, Modern Twelver Shi’a Eschatological, suicide bombing) stem from a deeply-held belief that the world is so screwed up that the slate needs to be wiped clean. Cleansed. Furthermore, someone possessed of such a belief would probably be unusually easy to convince of the unpleasantness/worthlessness of their current life and the preferable nature of the afterlife.
“I think most dreams of destruction (anarchist/leftist, Christian Eschatological, Deep Ecology, Modern Twelver Shi’a Eschatological, suicide bombing) stem from a deeply-held belief that the world is so screwed up that the slate needs to be wiped clean. Cleansed. Furthermore, someone possessed of such a belief would probably be unusually easy to convince of the unpleasantness/worthlessness of their current life and the preferable nature of the afterlife.”
Yes. Dalyrymple notes that both Conrad’s Secret Agent and Updike’s latest novel cover those themes.
[See Dalyrymple’s excellent City Journal piece on the matter].
To me what is fascinating is that the above belief is usually held by comic book villains. Batman’s Rhas Al Ghul, Marvel’s Thanos, Valiant’s Toyo Harada, etc all hold that the world is corrupt and only by destroying it and remaking it in their own (Godlike) image etc.
What it says that people choose to copy the VILLAIN in pop culture (which is always stronger and more formative IMHO than high/middlebrow culture) is something else to contemplate.
[In a real sense boys learn to become men by reading about Captain America, Superman, Batman and Spiderman than any moral instruction by parents, religious leaders, etc]
AL. You are all over the place. I believe your thesis is that rage and poor philosophy is the disease of our age?
I have a couple of observations:
First, we watched “End of the Spear” this past weekend. For those of you who haven’t seen it, go out and rent it. It bears directly on this conversation. To be short, it concerns some of the last Stone Age people in the world in 1950 in the Amazon, and how western missionaries interacted with them.
The Waodani believed that rage and violence were ways of life. The more you speared, the more powerful you became. Their society was so violent that they were in danger of extinction — every social interaction could be the cause of a life or death struggle. Blood feuds went on for generations. An old tribesman might be 35.
Were these people killers because of rage and bad philosophy? Maybe. But there was no disease present. This was a natural way of life. It’s just that living based on self-sacrifice and kindness is a superior model. Some folks haven’t figured that out yet.
Second, there are mentally ill people out there. Especially in political disucssions, people let their rage get the best of them. Folks that are probably the nicest people on earth will sound like flaming killers at times. The internet also de-personalizes communication. I think a lot of people don’t believe there really is anyone else out there. Perhaps they think they are just typing into their computer.
Finally, I think perhaps we ascribe too much to rage. I saw the leader of Hezbollah on TV this evening basically telling Israel to “bring it on”. I’ve also seen OBL say some nasty things about America and the west. They don’t seem angry at all. In fact, they seem quite sane and collected. I believe it is possible to have a philosophy that calls for violence without being violent yourself. This is very strange to us! But I believe it. I think those suicide bombers were sane, rational, calm, happy, etc. They just wanted to blow up people because their philosophy said there was value in that.
When we hear those terrorist guys taunt us, we feel anger and rage. Perhaps this is ineffective. We might be better off sort of casually noticing, perhaps the way one might notice there is a bug crawling across the floor.
In short, I don’t see it that way. I see it that people are using old tribal philosophical world-views in the modern age. We’re all running Society 3.0 and these guys are stuck with Caveman 7.1
Its PTSD A.L.
No cure but pot helps. Heroin for the really bad cases.
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2004/11/origins-of-islamic-rage.html
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2005/02/police-and-ptsd.html
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2006/04/ptsd-and-endocannabinoid-system.html
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2005/02/police-and-ptsd.html
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2005/04/test-for-ptsd.html
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2006/04/ptsd-and-endocannabinoid-system.html
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2005/10/soldiers-disease.html
http://powerandcontrol.bl*gspot.com/2004/09/heroin.html
Instead of war I’d flood the ME with the appropriate drugs. Way too radical for our present government. So killing it is.
I don’t see anything incendiary about these thoughts, they aren’t even much off the beaten track. Why were you so worried? In flippant moods I say that Europe suffers from terminal boredom, that it’s current state is the result of 200 years of bad Philosophy, that Marx was an unrepentant romantic and so was the movement he spawned, so on and so forth. I don’t try to fill in the details but I don’t feel these thoughts are so far off the mark either, nor terribly far removed from your own.
As to Frisch, I wonder if she didn’t have relationship problems. A newpaper article in Arizona profiled her partner, another professor, and I kind of assumed that her university position flowed from that relationship (and maybe not). But when she resigned and moved to Oregon (has she?) I immediately suspected that her relationship had foundered. Why else would she leave the area so easily?
Rage makes chemicals. Those chemicals can cover pain chemicals.
Pain relievers are a better way to go. The amygdala is the brain organ most involved.
See the work of Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Best not let any scientologists get wind of that M. Simon.
I was taught growing up that we are pre-programmed as a species genetically against suicide. That it’s a survival of the species thing, that no one except someone in the grip of a psychotic episode who had lost their mind would consider suicide, let alone commit it. That there would always be that reluctance and that hesitation before pulling the trigger to stepping off the ledge that would make 99% of us pull back and not do it, which is how the species keeps itself going forward.
It seems to me that in the face of increasing evidence from the lunatics in the Middle East that we are slowly slowly coming to accept that suicide is way-easier to accomplish than we ever knew, and that the last-minute twitch simply doesn’t exist to stop many many people from pulling the trigger or pushing the bomb button.
Does this mean that the species has changed? Or that the theory was wrong to begin with? Isn’t AL also asking whether the species has changed in his taking notice of Ms. Frisch’s exceedingly public melt-down?
The reason I’m positing this question is it seems to me that Ms. Frisch’s behavior is not that unusual. Her paranoia, her acidic jocularity, her rage, and her lethal threats were only singular in that she choose to aim them at a two-year old little boy. If she’d written the same sorts of threats and comments about Joe Lieberman or Karl Rove or that old debbil Bushitler, no one would have thought it unusual, because we have grown used to reading such blood-thirsty reactions on the internet from many many many of the “enlightened Left”.
I have to believe this is also a suicidal impulse to some degree because the people I know personally who think like this are NOT being successful in their lives. Where a Muslim may smile as he pushes the button on his suicide belt, a Kos Kid may grin maniacally as he “speaks his mind” and then finds himself “disinvited” to participate further in whatever group or job he was in.
I would love to see someone do some research on the people who post on internet sites like Kos’s or move-on.org or the Democratic Underground, to find out how many of them are employed or unemployed … AND what the rate of suicide among that group is.
NahnCee:
You might find this amusing: “Right-wing governments increase suicide rates.”:http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2817
It seems that the suicide rate in Britain increases under Tory governments: “… losers are more likely to kill themselves in the individualistic, ‘winner-takes-all’ societies favoured by right wing governments, because they are left to fend for themselves.”
I would assume that these poor losers who are left to fend for themselves are not Tories, because Tories drive around in Bugattis looking for ways to spend their outrageous British Petroleum profits.
So you would have to conclude that voting for a left-wing party in Britain makes you more likely to kill yourself, but it’s not your fault!
don’t really disagree with any of this, only that I believe it’s important to have empathy and realize that I, myself, and the political ideologies and positions I associate with, have all these tendencies and are not fundamentally any different than any other human being. To empathize is not to excuse evil in any way, it’s just to acknowledge our common humanity, common temptations, common perils.
Otherwise, it’s really easy to convince yourself that you and your ideology/party represents the pinnacle and true glory of Western civilization, and that anybody more violent than you is a nihilistic psycho, and that anybody less violent than you is an effete wimp.
roublen –
I agree 100%. Empathy is the key…
A.L.
lurker,
It seems to me by attacking post-modernism* you are attacking relativism. I’d say that a liberal society depends on relativism. Indeed, can you imagine a liberal society where norms, values, etc. aren’t to a great extent relative? It is when you lack the space for such relativism that you are likely in a totalitarian state. Or to put my point in historical terms, both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were based on ideologies which eschewed relativism and taught that there was “one true moral path.” For an excellent description of Nazi morality see Claudia Koonz’s excellent monograph titled The Nazi Conscience.
*Personally, I think post-modernism is s diverse, important and insightful discipline and that it has its roots in the Sophists, Montaigne and the Enlightenment. As such, it is interesting to note that a totalitarian thinker like Plato rejected the liberalism of the Sophists. An excellent discussion of these matters can be found in Orlando Patterson’s Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, Vol. I.
(#12)”Otherwise, it’s really easy to convince yourself that you and your ideology/party represents the pinnacle and true glory of Western civilization, and that anybody more violent than you is a nihilistic psycho, and that anybody less violent than you is an effete wimp…”
It may be easy to convince yourself that you are uber-lord, but please don’t take anything I said as reason to do that.
Castillon (#14) made a great point about being too absolute “I’d say that a liberal society depends on relativism. Indeed, can you imagine a liberal society where norms, values, etc. aren’t to a great extent relative?”
I don’t feel that the fact that we have a more advanced philosophy is necessarily in conflict with either feeling empathy or having some degree of relativism. Too many people can’t accept this. Let me deal with relativism first.
Take the caveman example. In a liberal society, I can deal with many of his beliefs: the refusal to bathe, grunting as a sign of communication, and perhaps non-violent dancing around a fire to make the great spirit happy. Some of his beliefs, like human sacrifice, eating his neighbor’s liver, and attacking small children with his spear to take their spirit, I cannot tolerate.
Is this because I am somehow superior? Should I look down on the caveman? Indeed, am I forced to empathize in lieu of judgement? I don’t think so. What societies learn over time is that _some ideas are more suited towards civilization than others_. Don’t kill people, don’t steal, don’t hurt people on purpose, etc. One of these values is the understanding of tolerence and relativism! So no, you are not getting away from acknowledging that some core philosophies evolve over time to better serve man. If you want to call them good or the old ones evil — hey, works for me. But it’s not that simple. The new ones work better. The old ones didn’t.
It may be easy to think of myself as morally superior, and the caveman a “nihilistic psycho”, but that is truly a failure to empathize. It is also a failure to understand (not excuse). If, on the other hand, I try to ascribe some sort of mental illness or special circumstance to his violence? Gosh, I’m guilty then of stealing his belief system away from him. I, the great civilized man, have decided that his belief system doesn’t describe what he believes: it is only a symptom of deep underlying emotional and social problems he must be experiencing. But feat not, caveman! For I empathize with you. How sick and unfortunate you must be. It must be so bad to have such a poor social environment.
What a load of sentimental, self-righteous horse hockey. The guy believes if he dies in a holy war he will go to heaven. Why not just accept what he says at his word? Yes, there are underpinnings to his philosophy that we have evolved beyond. But having a philosophical argument is not going to change the mind of a relgiously fervent person.
It has always been a tendency of people to look at other people and feel superior to them. The example AL gives of this behavior is viewing suicide bombers as having some sort of special social/emotional/philosophical situation. This is why he is all over the place — he is trying to mix these people in with truly emotionally ill people.
For the primitively religious people, how shoudl we feel? We should have empathy, yes. But we also need understanding and respect. Understanding that core human philosophies evolve over time. Respect to allow people to believe things that aren’t as “enlightened” as us. None of this changes the fact that some folks have belief systems that make them a serious threat to their fellow man and should be hunted down. Unless civilization wasn’t that great an idea.
Wow. Huge subject. My two cents:
– First thought, free associating – google Superfluous Humanity
– Freed from the bounds of subsistence driven existence, what to do? Especially as room to pioneer is constrained.
– Some people engage themselves happily in hobbies, but others feel a void, feel trapped.
– Solve problem, engage them, but how?
– Failure to solve problem means likelihood of war or authoritarian regimes
Irony – no time, have to work now. But my sense is that many of the jobs in our economy are make work jobs, especially if you look at the government. As we moved off the land, and then out of the factories, the pool of people that are not engaged has grown as a percentage. As overall wealth increases, these people have the means to foment trouble. Not all do, but they are like an open Petri dish, waiting for an infection.
Daniel Markham,
Some of his beliefs, like human sacrifice, eating his neighbor’s liver…
The question would be, did the subject of these acts consent (leave aside for now how one determines consent, etc.) to them? Or are these areas where even consent must be ignored by society, etc.?
What societies learn over time is that some ideas are more suited towards civilization than others. Don’t kill people, don’t steal, don’t hurt people on purpose, etc. One of these values is the understanding of tolerence and relativism!
This seems to point to the social construction of values, etc. based on experience. In arguing this you have something in common with Protagoras (one of the most important Sophists).
The example AL gives of this behavior is viewing suicide bombers as having some sort of special social/emotional/philosophical situation.
Most of the sociological data I’ve seen states that they are “rational” in their approach, aren’t psychotic, etc.
Respect to allow people to believe things that aren’t as “enlightened” as us.
The problem comes with line drawing. Now, I’m a libertarian minarchist; I think the best society is one where freedom exists as a sea in which there are a few islands of government power. Other people have the opposite view, or some view in between. Because of this we are confronted with issues related to majoritarianism, natural rights, fundamental rights, etc.
Castillon.
I was very afraid we were going to get the Sophists and Plato involved in all of this. And they seemed like such nice guys.
“Or are these areas where even consent must be ignored by society?” — I don’t know. I think of this as being unsettled. As society gets more interconnected (the nuclear family, social programs for the poor and sick, etc) the rest of us take a financial interest in how well people treat themselves and others. This interest is not part of nature (Natural Law), but evolves as part of our compassion. Compassion is constraining! So even though I might be in favor of allowing one person to consume another person with their consent, I am practical enough to realize that we have moved past that amount of freedom. Whether that movement was evolutionary or a mis-step has yet to be determined. I would look for examples of highly capable societies with voluntary canabalism as counter-indicative.
I believe you are correct in that the divergence of viewpoints forces us to sharpen up the old philosophy skills. What works personally may not have the foundation necessary to apply to the world.
I think Plato’s cave was the cave inside of all of us. It is an inner self, as St. Augustine described centuries later (based on Platonic ideals) As we move out into the light, we’re working through our inner decisions and inner life. Sophistry, on the other hand, deals with how we interact regardless of our inner life. I understand that I am re-framing those genres. Both camps have very important things to say to the other camps. I believe these two schools of thought can be negotiated on an ongoing basis, and I believe there are some ground rules we can use.
On empathy:
I agree with roublen that lack of empathy leads to bad philosophy, but not quite the way he desribes.
A common reason why people can’t empathize with others is because they are obsessed with themselves, and a major cause of self-obsession is inability to cope with personal pain. Such people are more likely to be plagued by feelings of paranoia and victimization than by feelings of superiority. For such a person, a dogmatic (even violent) philosophy makes a comfortable fit, especially a philosophy with lots of villians and victims and outrageous injustices.
In the case of Grushka of Daily Kos, I was struck by the fact that his “empathy” made totalitarian demands: he had to have an entire society that he could fully empathize with, full of like-minded people, else he could not happily relate to others at all. To me, a person like that is badly damaged and unable to form meaningful personal relationships with other people.
On the other hand, why shouldn’t this cause and effect relationshipo work just as well in reverse, with bad philosophy causing inability to empathize? Because some philosophies remind me of nothing so much as self-inflicted mental illnesses, in which normal people voluntarily embrace a whole array of pathological symptoms.
There is a line of reasoning found in “Cognitive Therapy”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_therapy that says that because people have bad philosophies and self-talk, they become depressed. If I understand this discussion well enough, AL is saying that this rage and bad philosophy is a harbinger of violence.
I believe these people are sick before they ever grab on to any philosophy, the philosophy simply gives their sickness a more complex veneer. In addition, what people say outwardly and what people say to themselves is not the same thing. One of the interesting aspects of Cognitive Therapy is that when people are forced to write out their inner dialog, all sorts of stuff comes out. I DO, however, think that changing philosophies and self-talk can dramatically change a person’s life. In short, I think our personality and emotions pick our philosophy for us, but we can change it if we honestly work at it.
Daniel:
I agree that this is often the case. An example might be John Dean, who is currently peddling a kindergarten version of Theodore Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality fallacy around the talk shows. Dean strikes me as the kind of Silly Putty-for-brains mess who is just looking for any Nixon who will give him a job and a little bit of power.
By why shouldn’t the causation work in reverse, and be even more likely to do so? The power of ideas is awesome, and the flesh is weak.
Glen (#21)
Yes. It does work in reverse, hence the utility of Cognitive Therapy. The patient replaces the old self-belief and self-talk with new versions.
I believe this is called self-indoctrination. Or brainwashing. Or religioius fervor. Lots of names. Repeating any set of ideas over and over again will bend the mind. I absolutely agree.
In the west, especially among non-religious types, the lack of core values can lead to a type of nihilism. As one learns more about the philosophy of nihilism, this can become a spiral. The philosophy then effectively takes the place of the “natural” religion that would otherwise be present in the person. I would argue, however, that this feedback loop only happens to those who are already prone to mental illness. It’s one thing to be a teenager and find a compatriot of your teen angst in Nietzsche, it’s quite another to become obsessed with the idea.
At some point, philosophy becomes religion. It is taught, indoctrinated, reinforced by society, and praised. These are your 9-11 bombers, in my opinion.
From my perspective the problem has to do with witnessing the utter impersonality of nature, juxtaposed against some specific foolish act of men. The emblem of it, at least for me, was a news episode I saw way back in the ’80s of a starving child in Eritrea. The screen filled with this image of a child clearly slipping away right before our eyes, with flies buzzing around and walking on his face as he jerkily faded out of the world… and just when the image filled the screen and had you completely embedded in empathy the image blanked out suddenly and they cut to a commercial about some innane toilet cleanser, hawked by people who the late Jacques Brell describes as “cute, cute, cute… in a stupid-ass way”.
This was an emotional atrocity, but it’s emblematic. I’m not sure rage is the appropriate response, but it’s an understandable response. Cajoling people into purchasing stuff that amplifies the throughput of the culture, essentially producing a lot of garbage we can’t safely get rid of and that pollutes us in more ways than one is the problem. Doing away with TV commercials as a form of self-defense, and making the stuff solely subscription-based might help, but who’s going to agree to that?
Ok I’m kinda conservative, but I sure hate commercialism. The Soviet dissident, Andre Amalrik, used to liken the Soviet propaganda machine to Western commercialism, arguing that they were both forms of “spiritual prostitution” that inherently degrade humanity. I think he had something…
Suicide is the result of suffering. The suffering here is in the mind’s eye. Looking backwards in time, the mind experiences regret. Looking forward, it is fear and anxiety. This type of suffering is likely a “superior good” which not everyone will experience fully, like those living a subsistence driven existence.
Religion and philosophy can attempt to alleviate this suffering. Religion sometimes explains the suffering and gives it meaning. Or promises future rewards which justify the suffering. Some philosophies emphasize living in the present.
Where do some philosophies go bad? Many bad philosophies are Utopian. A better, fearless future can justify many present outrages. While awful deeds might increase the suffering of remorse, the future good might merit such sacrifice or a new form of backward-looking justification is introduced: the grievance. Not only is the future bright, there is a class of people for whom suffering is legimite. It seems to me that a whole host of bad philosophies do not exist in the present, but lean forward into the awaited future and remake the past as they go along.
Some religions explain the suffering by promising an afterlife. But they may increase the pain of regret for moral transgressions (sin) and the fear of eternal damnation. The stricter the moral code, the more potential for internal suffering.
Which brings me to Naveed Afzal Haq. A self-described Muslim, who was baptized in a Christian church last year. His background includes drinking and arrests for lewd behavior in public. He had reason to regret his past and as a Muslim to be increasingly fearful of his future. Baptism is a purification ritual that has varying interpretations among Christians, but fundamentally it wipes the slate clean. A fresh start.
Jihadism makes the same promise. A lifetime of sin be wiped away with a single intense act and the future afterlife assured. Not only that, some of its proponents hold that martyrdom can bring 70 people into paradise who have not earned it. “(See The Forever Jihad)”:http://www.donaldsensing.com/?p=368 To these adherents, the suicide bomber is not merely ending their own suffering, but is engaging in an act of love to family and freinds. I am not surprised that they smile.
If suffering is the cause of suicide, it is also a source of compassion and empathy. A bad philosophy will seek to cure the pain, but remove these aspects in the process.
Castillon,
Folks can have very strong beliefs and remain tolerant of, or at least not resort to violence against, others and their very different beliefs. Relativism is not required for this.
Relativism is fine and dandy as an academic exercise. We are now witnessing a huge social experiment of it’s ideas being put into practice, where it is a guiding philosophy for many.
You may disagree, but it doesn’t appear like an optimum organizing principle for any society that wishes to survive a Darwinian struggle against other societies that, you know, actually believe in themselves and remain confident in their principles.
Unfortunately, relativism doesn’t seem to improve the lives of its individual practitioners either. It appears that government client classes and those with expectations of entitlements based on class (or maybe just because) are more susceptible to it’s siren call. Folks that don’t expect gifts from the universe, seem to be more resistant. This seems strange, and yet strangely descriptive.
All societies have rules against theft and murder.
The degree of civilization depends on how large a group those “thou shall nots” apply to.
My thinking is that the very specific question of what produces an environment conducive to suicide+murder is how the environment propagates, mitigates, and tolerates alienation.
Rambling exposition here.
lurker,
Folks can have very strong beliefs and remain tolerant of, or at least not resort to violence against, others and their very different beliefs. Relativism is not required for this.
Sure it is. In fact, tolerance for such is a form of relativism. It is an acknowledgement that that in many areas of life that truth and moral precepts are relative. Indeed, that is what is at the heart of much of what Kant has to say on the limits of reason. In fact, I would argue that you simply can’t have a liberal society without relativism – if a society lacks such then the independent moral space of the individual (a hallmark of a liberal society) is wiped out.
Relativism is fine and dandy as an academic exercise. We are now witnessing a huge social experiment of it’s ideas being put into practice, where it is a guiding philosophy for many.
Relativism is at the root of Western liberalism, from the time of the Sophists onward.
You may disagree, but it doesn’t appear like an optimum organizing principle for any society that wishes to survive a Darwinian struggle against other societies that, you know, actually believe in themselves and remain confident in their principles.
One of those principles is relativism, and that has been the case for thousands of years. And yes, I am quite confident and happy to live in a society which honors, defends and practices relativism, as compared to societies which don’t.
Unfortunately, relativism doesn’t seem to improve the lives of its individual practitioners either. It appears that government client classes and those with expectations of entitlements based on class (or maybe just because) are more susceptible to it’s siren call. Folks that don’t expect gifts from the universe, seem to be more resistant. This seems strange, and yet strangely descriptive.
I’d say at based that relativism has nothing to do with government handouts, and that lots of folks who have supposedly a non-relativistic worldview take gobs of such handouts.
.bq We are not given to a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (paraphrasing II Tim. 1:7)
notes
1. fear is in this case in opposition to love.
2. love, power and sanity seem to go together here.
I was going to ramble on about spirits (seriously, I had written the comment but wiped it out…) but I’ve decided not to as it is not as relevant as I had originally thought.
If we believe that thoughts lead to actions (“If you have hated your brother in your heart then you have already murdered him.”?) Then how can we not link bad philosophy to bad actions? I think maybe we deny a few things out of either fear or necessity…
1. We are all capable of doing really, really, really bad things. Given the wrong situation and wrong thinking we could end up there.
2. “Mental Illness” in many ways is simply a shield we put up to try to prevent empathy with disturbing persons. (Disturbing being used in the relative sense, that is, disturbing to whomever is involved.)
These people, no matter violent and inhuman they behave, are like us, human. (Empathy anyone?) This does not mean that they are not our enemies. This classic error is cited today by AL vis a vis Mike Wallace and Iran’s dictator. We assume that in order to fight someone they must be inhuman. Trouble with that is, spend enough time with anyone and you will discover that they are human. Why? Because, um, they are. Duh?
So I think that we seal off ourselves from these people (think of the people who you see and want to look the other way) in order to protect ourselves emotionally. Whether that itself is justifiable or not is another discussion.
My argument is that bad philosophy has become an idol to these people, and it destroys them slowly but surely. We can argue utility of ideas, which in many cases is a valid argument, but in this case I do not believe it to be so.
For instance, I would conjecture that Forgiveness is not good or bad based on our experience as a society( and thus it comes into favor or disfavor accordingly). Forgiveness is unequivically a good thing. But of course, we must know WHAT it is and how it is done in order for it to be so. So, I would say that a philosophy that encourages you to hold grudges is a bad philosophy. Not by utility (though in many cases it will be bad by any measure of utility) but by an absolute measure due to the nature of mankind.
So if we were fish or something, the rules might be different. But, um, we’re not. Anyway, I digress…
My argument then can be pushed a little further and say, “Bad Philosohpies destroy people. How bad a philosophy is determined by the proportion of its ideas which are good or bad.” How are ideas good or bad? Not because I say so, or because anyone does. But, to be kind of circular, they work. But hold on a second, different philosophies have different goals. So, the best ideas are probably the ones that are beneficial to the widest range of goals.
So more clearly: “Bad philosophies destroy people, because they are corrupted by ideas that are shown to be unbeneficial or destructive.”
There are also, in my theory, a lot of optional things (relative things) I would never argue that getting up at 7:30 in the morning is absolutely the best time to get up, because, in lieu of all of the factors, such a judgement is controlling and erreneous.
So an important part of discovering bad philosophy is understanding what things are optional/superficial (relative) and what things are mandatory/integral (absolute). (At least that’s what I think.)
So to come back with some of what has been said, the idea that we are surrounded by and must live through a world of evil — there is something integral about this. We’re saying then, that the world is inherently evil (or bad.) and we, who in the very least our bodies are a product of it, are also partaking in this evil. I think that is not an unreasonable conclusion?
Christianity has been infected with a nasty negative (and unbiblical) idea along this strain: Original Sin. Original Sin says that because of Adam, all humans are ‘born into sin’. This… is not in scripture. So don’t argue that it is. What it does, however, is create that same ‘world of evil’ mindset. What is correct is, “The fall of man” referring to, specifically Adam choosing his wife over God, and generally. every person choosing something over God. So if you correct the idea, we’re not inherently evil, but we have been corrupted by our CHOICES.
Which gets rid of the ‘World of Evil’ philosophy and explains it in one fell swoop, possibly.
If we note the similarity between Spirits (in the biblical sense) and ideas/memes/philosophies, we can see something interesting when we read:
.bq For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12.
Though it may be incorrect to say they are the same thing, you can see that they were talking about this stuff (Paul writing to Ephesus) 2000 years ago or so.
If the source of man’s actions are his thoughts, then the enemies we really are fighting against are bad ideas and philosophies and memes — the things that cause both us and our enemies to do ill to one another (and to ourselves.)
More or less, I think the Bible agrees with you, AL. It is a little more complex than that overall, though.
#28: Truth is not relative. Morality is complex, which is due to the complexity of the world. Relativity in my mind inherent to certain things — our limited perspectives combined with the number of things that just simply are a matter of choice (preference) creates a lot of relativity.
Both Absolutivity and Relativity go hand in hand (like yin and yang) in the description of the world. (or this is how I have experienced things.)
Post-modernism was good only in that it helped us understand the relativism that really truly exists in the world. But it is no end unto itself.
Absolutism falls flat because there are things that are preference. Relativism falls flat because there are things that are in no ways preferential. No yin without yang?
In End of The Spear, the society was going to be destroyed because murder is absolutely unacceptable. A philosophy in which freely killing those who you hate prevails, is going to lead to destruction. (Well, are there any counter-examples?)
#13 from Armed Liberal: “Empathy is the key…”
What is the lock?
River (#30) Any chance I could get you to explain this a bit more?
“Absolutism falls flat because there are things that are preference. Relativism falls flat because there are things that are in no ways preferential. No yin without yang?”
I think that this is what we are facing.
We are fighting something like one of the early chess playing computer programs, when they had paper programs, that is detailed sets of written instructions for human beings to carry out. The technician going through the drills as dictated by the paper program is not your opponent, the program is your opponent; just as, if you play Chessmaster on a board with someone sitting at a board and making the moves he sees on the screen, you are really playing the Chessmaster program, not him.
A paper program may be primitive, but it will unfailingly beat very soft opponents, those who don’t grasp the moves, don’t want to play and walk away from the board (losing on time) and so on. The paper program’s hostility is inexorable, and if you don’t fight you lose. That, plus the sheer horror and demoralizing evil of jihad, as opposed to the pretty and bloodless abstractions of chess, is what we are up against.
Armed Liberal, is this a lock that your key fits? Does it have tumblers your key can turn? Can you point to historic examples of jihad armies turned back by empathy? Can you beat Chessmaster by empathizing with it?
Castillon,
Relativism is not the same thing as toleraance. A Christian does not haave to agree with a Musilm or aa Hindu or a Buddist. In fact, a Chritian would likely believe that all are doomed to eternal damnation. The Christian might acknowlede that each individual is free to choose his own fate. This tolerance, not relativism. And I reject your assertion that western liberalism is based on relativism, quite the opposite in fact.
The US Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man both assert foundational truths, not relativistic truths. Dream on dude.
. I never asserted that this was not the case. Go back read what I wrote.
lurker,
Relativism is not the same thing as toleraance.
I’d say that tolerance is a form or aspect of relativism. Indeed, it doesn’t matter whether you accept the precepts of another person’s religion; what does matter is that one is open to the idea that others have legitimate POV and that one cannot prove that one’s religious views are indeed correct. Indeed, I can’t see how true tolerance can work without acknowledging in general the validity of the viewpoints of others.
And I reject your assertion that western liberalism is based on relativism, quite the opposite in fact.
You can reject it all you want; relativism as a value has been part of the works of some of the greatest Western thinkers, including Protagoras, Cervantes, Montesquieu, Sterne, Kant, etc.
The US Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man both assert foundational truths, not relativistic truths. Dream on dude.
Actually, relativism is part of the documents, including the religion clauses; indeed, you can’t admit to things like religious liberty without having a relativistic viewpoint. Indeed, why would one protect religious liberty if one didn’t accept that varying religious viewpoints are equally correct?
Want more relativism? Try the third article of the French Declaration of Rights and Man:
4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
So, outside of one particular non-relativistic restraint, “[l]iberty consists in the freedom to do everything…” This is an acknowledgment that humans will differ in what they view as the proper fruits of liberty and it respects their relative viewpoints as equally valid so long as they injure no one else.
Let’s take on another article:
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
We see here the non-relativist claim that “free communication” is a universal right of man. We also see that relativism is at the heart of any such claim, since the views of every citizen have equal merit before the law (so long as they don’t do harm).
I never asserted that this was not the case. Go back read what I wrote.
Didn’t you write that relativism went hand in hand with government handouts?
Actually, let me amend my comment slightly. It is probably more the case that tolerance is a way of thinking that results from relativism.
I still think you are unneccesarily conflating tolerance with relativism and semantics is boring.
All: Very interesting thread.
I have not developed my thoughts enough for them to be useful but they might suggest some areas for further research for some.
I read Emil Durkheim’s “Suicide” about 30 years ago when I was trying to figure out why The West, in my opinion, had collectively lost the will to live and was committing cultural suicide. I am sure at least some of the folks here have read the book and that modern work on the subject has invalidated much of it. But I still thought it was really interesting and useful.
I also suspect that movements like the Ghost Dancers, Kamikaze, Mau Mau, 19th Century Anarchists and some modern terrorist movements have a lot in common. I don’t know what to do with that observation but some of you might.
Note that one of the 10 Aug aircraft bomb plotters gave up weed for rage.
I guess that is part of the price we pay for making the weed socially unacceptable.
Magic # 911171
Some random thoughts …
Unhappy people
Someone once said ‘unhappy women kill themselves, unhappy men kill other people’ (or words to that effect). It’s not true in every single case, certainly there are male suicides and female murderers, but (anger/thrill) spree killers/mass murderers/serial killers are almost invariably male, and the vast majority of the female ones are part of a male-female pair or group. For fascinating and informative analysis of the unhappiness->anger->violence sequence, I recommend just about any of the non-fiction books by former FBI profilers Robert Ressler and John Douglas. Douglas is a bit overfond of tooting his own horn, but the man knows his stuff. Also, child psychologist Jonathan Kellerman has a chilling book about sociopathic children titled ‘Savage Spawn.’
Bad philosophies
How do you distinguish between ‘bad’ philosophies and ‘good’ ones? If we take militant Islam as a ‘bad’ philosophy, what are its harmful characteristics? It teaches that lashing out, not looking inward, is the antidote to unhappiness. On the other hand, trying to rectify bad situations rather than meekly accepting them is a characteristic of a ‘good’ philosophy. Militant Islam also dehumanizes other human beings, making it acceptable (or even praiseworthy) to assault, rob, enslave, oppress, or otherwise abuse others based on that dehumanization. But, there isn’t a military in the world that doesn’t dehumanize ‘the enemy.’ Obviously, there’s a world of difference between Osama bin Laden and Dr. Phil (even if they may both be grandstanding blowhards), and I don’t for one moment think there’s any moral equivalence between Hamas and the US Marine Corps. Hopefully someone else can articulate it better.
Chicken or egg?
Are unhappy/angry people drawn to bad philosophies or do bad philosophies make angry/unhappy people? I think it’s a bit of both. I once described Islam as ‘a religion tailor-made for losers,’ which is very un-PC, but also quite true IMHO. It’s very popular in prison, which is basically wall-to-wall losers. On the other hand, a great many Islamist terrorists were born and raised in the religion. (Insert standard disclaimer here about the many peaceful Muslims, adult converts or otherwise). This goes for any ‘bad’ philosophy, be it militant Islam, white supremacists, or whathaveyou. I suspect mirror neurons play a not-insignificant role, regardless.
Absolutism vs. relativism
Balance. As with so many things, balance is key. Extreme relativism is nihilistic anarchy, extreme absolutism is totalitarianism. There need to be some bedrock, absolute, this-far-and-no-farther principles in a society. But they cannot control every single aspect of everyone’s life or what you get is oppression and stagnation.
Relativism & tolerance
Castillon said, I can’t see how true tolerance can work without acknowledging in general the validity of the viewpoints of others. I can. Referring back to Daniel Markham’s caveman, I can view Og’s fireside gyrations as having no validity whatsoever while still tolerating them. Toleration doesn’t mean acknowledging the validity of other people’s viewpoints, it means acknowledging their right to hold different views (however misguided, delusional, and just plain back-a**ward they may be). Toleration often flows from relativism, but relativism isn’t a requirement.
#40 from Achillea:
Relativism & tolerance
Castillon said, I can’t see how true tolerance can work without acknowledging in general the validity of the viewpoints of others. I can.
For a reasonable level of practical tolerance to be politically stable, it helps if you believe in something definite. Example: pax deorum, the peace of the gods. (A pagan Roman concept.) All the gods should be at peace, hence, hopefully, no earthquakes or other unpleasant acts of god. To this end: you respect our gods, even if just pro forma, and we’ll respect your gods, and so nobody needs to get their nose out of joint, especially no angry gods, but also no pious populations.
For every pro-tolerance belief there seems to be a challenge that breaks the system.
A system where the followers of one god demand that no other gods be honoured, and hold that it is a positive evil to honor all other gods (whose existence is denied anyway) broke the pagan Roman system. Late Rome was mired in intractable social disharmony and civil war between Christians and old-believing pagans.
For us, Islam breaks our system of religious tolerance, freedom of speech, democracy, racial rent-seeking (in practice) and multiculturalism. One religion demands tolerance for itself and in the same breath is intolerant of all others. It has booming demographics, making it a democratic winner, but it has no credentials as a defender of democracy for others once it is in the driver’s seat. It declares opposition to itself to be racism, thus abusing the racial rent-seeking system. And it is a deadly enemy of free speech except for itself and messages approved by it. (Example, the cartoon jihad.)
We can’t get peace by giving in any more than the pagan Romans could. At most, only half of us would convert, and then we’d have intractable civil wars, meaner that the Romans had, since Christianity has a more jealous god than the pagans had, and Islam is very much nastier than Christianity is.
The pagan Romans, till very late in the day, kidded themselves their problem was not nearly as severe as it was, and their complacency facilitated their fall. Still, they had the excuse that a social disaster like this had not been seen before.
If we don’t learn from that disaster, we can be the next to go under, and lose the rest of the Latin (and Greek, in sum Western) heritage, and bequeath on future generations the wonderful life of Christians in Afghanistan.
If we wake up and fight, we might still lose, but you know we might win too. We’ve won before against suicidal child-sacrificing religious lunatics. (I mean Carthage.) And Osama Bin Laden is no Hannibal Barca.
(Thoughts on some of Achillea’s other random thoughts later. Since Armed Liberal’s original post was all over the shop, I reserve the right to argue that such random responses are on-topic.)
#40 from Achillea:
Absolutism vs. relativism
Balance. As with so many things, balance is key. Extreme relativism is nihilistic anarchy, extreme absolutism is totalitarianism. There need to be some bedrock, absolute, this-far-and-no-farther principles in a society. But they cannot control every single aspect of everyone’s life or what you get is oppression and stagnation.
Basically I agree with you.
So of course instead of focusing on the 99% we agree on here, I’ll go off on a tangent about something we may not agree on. 🙂
I favor healthy taboos more than principles, though both are good.
A taboo is a raw and emotional “thou shalt not!”, like the “ick!” factor in incest. Taboos tend to be highly effective, if not undermined, and they don’t necessarily take over more and more of social life. (Though they certainly can. Example: rabbis using their power to certify or not certify things kosher to dictate all sorts of things not directly about food.) A taboo gives you something like miasma in the Greek sense – a sense of contagious taboo and divine disfavor – if you break it.
Taboos keep people from acts of murder, and keep society workable, when abstract principles, easily reasoned into silly putty, would never do so.
If people have a shared, gut-level horror of, let’s say, putting a pillow over grandpa’s face and holding down firmly till the useless of invalid is dead and the money in his will is yours, then grandpa can sleep safely. If people are debating over abstract principles of quality and mere quantity of life, rationally, without horror – then grandpa is in a lot of trouble.
Of course bad taboos, like putting an “ick!” factor on the whole caste of “untouchables”, or on “infidels”, or on women suspected of menstruating, can be very bad indeed.
Positive principles can be very good. But they can also be dangerous, they can grow endlessly, along with the power of whoever is charged to uphold them. Also, because they cover more, they are more likely to run up against changes in science and history. (We know much more than we once did about how chemistry works, and also about how some social experiments, like tightly controlled communes work out.) Principles – though I emphasize they are good – don’t necessarily confer protection on the powerless as effective as taboos do, because people are less inclined really to agree on principles and more inclined to bend them pretzel-shaped to suit whatever people with power want.
On of the things I learned form studying Holocaust rescuers is that people with elaborate principles by and large did not rescue Jews. The people who would risk their necks and actually save lives did not have – or think that they needed – anything more by the way of principles than an immediate recognition of the situation – “If I don’t, she’ll die!” – plus a gut sense that this was intolerable, and the will to act, to take responsibility to make the intolerable not happen.
When I internalized that fact, I also turned against basing ethics on fancy philosophies. The better something is for a philosopher of ethics, who needs plenty to write about and subtleties galore, the worse it will serve you (or anyone who needs to rely on your ethical character) in real life.
Yet, principles can do a lot of good. Two examples: the Christian principle that one must love the sinner though one hates the sin does vast good everywhere that Christian influence prevails, because it counteracts the tendency to make people “icky”. (Including innocent people like rape victims.) For another example – the great changing of the divine guard in pagan Greek religion, with higher ideals of justice overcoming the reign of absolute taboos and the unforgiving furies.
I think the American Constitution, a series of clear “thou shalt not!”s addressed to the rulers, is a good, practical compromise between aspirations of freedom and specific negatives, though of course it was never made to govern a people without their own strong internal “thou shalt not!”s.
Rather than focusing on “bad philosophy” I would say that if people are guided too much by philosophical principles it throws up a question mark against their original education. Maybe taboo, custom, religion and role models weren’t giving them enough or relevant, effective enough guidance, and that is why they’ve resorted to philosophical bracing. (Which is certainly better than no bracing at all, and a hedonistic life in the worst sense.)
This is not a problem our enemies have.
They have all too much guidance from non-philosophical, emotive, non-rational sources – only it’s malign. It is taboo for them, among many other things, simply to let the Jews live in peace and safety in Israel, and in the long run to let the Spaniards live in peace and safety in Spain. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
#40 from Achillea:
Chicken or egg?
Are unhappy/angry people drawn to bad philosophies or do bad philosophies make angry/unhappy people? I think it’s a bit of both. I once described Islam as ‘a religion tailor-made for losers,’ which is very un-PC, but also quite true IMHO. It’s very popular in prison, which is basically wall-to-wall losers. On the other hand, a great many Islamist terrorists were born and raised in the religion. (Insert standard disclaimer here about the many peaceful Muslims, adult converts or otherwise). This goes for any ‘bad’ philosophy, be it militant Islam, white supremacists, or whathaveyou. I suspect mirror neurons play a not-insignificant role, regardless.
I think religion ought to suit losers, because most people are in one way or another at one time or another – and many people treasure for life who and what helped them best when they needed it the most.
One of the best uses of religion is to help people get back on their feet when they were down, and some of the best upholders of religion are those who aren’t down any more but remember when they used to be, so this is win/win all the way.
Christianity is a great religion for slaves, drunks and chronic losers. That’s an enormously good thing for Christianity and for people like (former) drunk George W. Bush.
Islam’s appeal to losers is one of its formidable qualities.
The alternative attitude – We reserve the right to refuse services to you. Your friends are all on welfare and you call yourself a Jew! – is no threat at all in the great global brawl of religions and their civilizations.
The pagan mystery cults of ancient Rome were very fond of telling people they weren’t good enough to join, and unlike the meshuggah Jews they didn’t have to put up with crazies (from a combination of birthright and a lack of anybody more sensible). Wealthy, rational, elite – losers. They’re not around any longer, or if anyone’s trying to reconstruct them it could only be total screwball losers, which is how this game is meant to be played.
Losers & Winners
I think religion ought to suit losers, because most people are in one way or another at one time or another – and many people treasure for life who and what helped them best when they needed it the most.
Speaking from personal experience, I can certainly say that’s true.
I’ll clarify my thinking (such as it was at 1am, when I wrote the post) and my terminology. I made a facetious remark about exempting moderate Muslims, but I need to be clearer. The Islam I’m speaking of in the ‘bad’ context is militant Islam (whatever proportion of the religion that might represent).
All religions (at least the ones that last, unlike the elitist pagan mystery trads you mention) appeal to losers. This can be looked at cynically as taking advantage of people when they’re vulnerable or optimistically as helping people when they’re down, either way it’s how a successful religion is maintained and perpetuated. Where, to me, ‘loser’ religions and the rest part company is what happens after that, especially in terms of results. A religion that consistently turns losers into functioning, contributing members of society I don’t really consider a loser religion. A religion that consistently turns losers into disaffected menaces to society I do consider a loser religion.
‘Good’ vs. ‘bad’ revisited
Since religion is just philosophy with candles and a dress code, that brings me back around to trying to define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ philosophies. Results. If we postulate ‘happiness’ and ‘intellectual/spiritual growth’ as good things (which I don’t think anyone will seriously argue with), then a given philosophy can be judged as ‘good’ to whatever extent it fosters those characteristics (in its followers or otherwise) and ‘bad’ to the extent it ignores or discourages those characteristics.
Take a stand
If we wake up and fight, we might still lose, but you know we might win too.
Oh, I definitely agree. My view wasn’t that we should tolerate anything, but that tolerance and validation were two separate beasties. I’m perfectly willing to tolerate Og’s harmless dancing. He can prance around until his feet fall off as far as I’m concerned. And if he starts chucking spears at the children, my assessment of the validity of his philosophy isn’t going to have a thing to do with my getting intolerant all over his a**.
I’m a results-based kinda gal. I’d much prefer, for example, that a guy be unwilling to commit rape because he believes that rape is wrong. But, failing that, I’ll settle for him keeping it zipped because he’s afraid of the consequences.
“If people have a shared, gut-level horror of, let’s say, putting a pillow over grandpa’s face and holding down firmly till the useless old invalid is dead and the money in his will is yours, then grandpa can sleep safely. If people are debating over abstract principles of quality and mere quantity of life, rationally, without horror – then grandpa is in a lot of trouble.”
this is awesome. not sure If I completely agree with the implication (that fancy philosophies are no good), but it’s a great point.
#46 from roublen: this is awesome. not sure If I completely agree with the implication (that fancy philosophies are no good), but it’s a great point.
Thanks for the kind words. 🙂
I don’t want to take what I said above too far.
There is such a thing as good rather than bad philosophy, it’s not all bad, judged by its effects. Good philosophy can be helpful, not only for individuals but on a social level, as with the Greeks.
And, my view of the good life calls for, first, life (a much stronger right to life than many people seem to agree with), but then for a flourishing life – implying a great deal of freedom and adventure, opportunities for exploration and the exercise of rational thought. I have to and do applaud philosophy in that context.
And, the examples that many people quote, I think rightly, of quality of philosophy as a professional activity being at odds with commendable character and decent, healthy guidance formation are Sartre and Camus… Sartre was a skilled, high-quality professional philosopher, and poisonously wrong about practically everything, especially Communism, while Camus was a brave and good man giving very decent guidance on the whole even though his philosophy was not so hot from a professional point of view. (If your son started reading Camus obsessively, that would be a Good Thing – he could find a lot worse guides than that.) Well, yes – but Camus was still a moral philosopher, even if not a top ranking one. Obviously philosophy does not exile you from courage and uprightness or stop you loving your mom.
More later, Achillea – I’m answering you very slowly, bit by bit (not just ignoring what you said later), because you say thing that I think deserve non-trivial replies.
#40 from Achillea:
Bad philosophies
How do you distinguish between ‘bad’ philosophies and ‘good’ ones? If we take militant Islam as a ‘bad’ philosophy, what are its harmful characteristics? It teaches that lashing out, not looking inward, is the antidote to unhappiness. On the other hand, trying to rectify bad situations rather than meekly accepting them is a characteristic of a ‘good’ philosophy. Militant Islam also dehumanizes other human beings, making it acceptable (or even praiseworthy) to assault, rob, enslave, oppress, or otherwise abuse others based on that dehumanization. But, there isn’t a military in the world that doesn’t dehumanize ‘the enemy.’ Obviously, there’s a world of difference between Osama bin Laden and Dr. Phil (even if they may both be grandstanding blowhards), and I don’t for one moment think there’s any moral equivalence between Hamas and the US Marine Corps. Hopefully someone else can articulate it better.
Before I go on: “… trying to rectify bad situations rather than meekly accepting them is a characteristic of a ‘good’ philosophy. The moral philosophy of Albert Camus in a nutshell. 🙂
I think you decide what your opinion on the good life really is, and why and what divine or secular context you see for that, and elaborate the consequences (on paper), and eliminate contradictory statements till you have a pretty solid synoptic philosophy, then test your definitions and reasoning in argument as far as you have the opportunity, and then you can talk sensible about good and bad philosophies. Of course that’s very much the short version. But basically I think that’s it, or anyway nothing else worked for me.
And if you don’t do that, I don’t know how you can really argue properly about good and bad philosophies. You can “win arguments” by volume or threatening not to be someone’s friend any more, and there are many other tricks – the Greeks listed more than a few. But without your own – pretty serious – philosophy, you’re hollow, you’ve got nothing. So we should do this.
And in this way we become part of the grand continuing conversation of the West … and that’s getting so pretentious I’ll leave it there.
Anyway, just my own view… If you think we are partners with god(s) in making a good world, obviously you start with a high respect for the dignity of the individual human person and a high priority on his or her flourishing.
On the score of individual human flourishing, what I like to see is remarkably good people whose goodness is distinctive to that civilization. If you could not take a particular religion or social philosophy out of the world without impoverishing the garden of human virtues, you’ve got a prima facie case that this is something that belongs. For example, the tzadik, the righteous Jew, amply justifies Jewish culture in all its jabbering, contentious, finger-in-the-face obnoxiousness. I understand that to some people, the upright Sufi would be sufficient to justify Islam. And when I look to the “new kind of Soviet man” produced by Socialism in Russia … basically I think: “That can go. That won’t be missed. The good bits were in the Russian heart anyway.” But the good ones are like precious books in a library of the most valuable kind of knowledge: “what is a or the good or right way to be?”
If you want to go further than that, beyond just individuals (like Mother Theresa) who are impressive and valuable in ways that can’t be separated from their religion/philosophy/culture; how far do you think we can really go together with no more accumulated knowledge than a bard on horseback can keep in his head?
So basically a good political philosophy has to be philanthropic, and then it has to encourage and support great cities, and with them libraries, science and so on. Cities mean cumulative knowledge and improvement. A good philosophy supports a good civilisation.
What’s a good civilization? Again it has to be good for individual people, but on a large scale it has to have as much staying power as possible, it has to flourish as much as possible in all sorts of ways, and it has to do this with a minimum of harm to other civilizations (that is city-systems, which in practice means religions), and a maximum of harm to militant barbarism, the general enemy. (It may not seem so now, but in the long course of military history I think that it has been.)
(At this stage, I already have practical tolerance built in as a key virtue. I am all for the Roman “pax deorum” in a social as well as a supernatural sense. On the other hand, if you are for the humiliation, stifling, subjugation or destruction of all religions other than your own, as Islam is, then a red warning light starts to flash, and I have many follow-up questions – to which Islam has highly unpleasant, disingenuous and un-reassuring answers.)
I can point to some very good civilizations, that have exhibited great staying power with short kill lists of other civilizations. (Egypt, Israel and China for three. How many noble civilizations are no longer here because those guys obliterated them?) I can point to a lot of others with lesser but still commendable records (Greece and Rome for two), others with spotty records, and some even with awful records. (It wasn’t just the invading Christians that thought the Aztecs were horrible, their neighbors thought the same, and were eager to be partners in their destruction.) And at the “ultimate evil” end of the spectrum I have Genghis Khan’s Mongols.
So it’s not really tough for me to decide that if your philosophy or religion – your culture-building pattern – gets you acting like a good Jew or a good Chinaman or a good Egyptian or (grin) a good Australian, it’s good. And to the extent that your philosophy lures you towards the bloody fumes of nomadic savagery, and toward crushing all philosophies and humbling all virtues other than your own, it’s a bad one.
Islam has a very mixed record. But I think on the whole it’s on the wrong side of the middle line. If all the Muslims in the world were suddenly replaced by an equal number of Parsis or Buddhists or Hindus (who by the way also make my “good” list for staying power and ability to cohabit the globe with other civilizations), I think the world would be a much better place. So, very bluntly, Islam is evil.
(I did not come to that opinion quickly, eagerly, happily, or without spending a long time reading up on the greatness of Islam, and without developing a warm admiration for some of its good points. So I feel I’ve already considered the contrary view, and I’m pretty solid in my opinions.)
Further reading, if desired, on the desirability of progress and civilization: Bill Whittle on Sanctuary, parts I (link) and II (link).
If different values take priority in your system (which they are likely to, as my values make sense in my grand context, which is eccentric and includes gods that are quite out of fashion), then you are obviously going to come up with a different good-to-bad spectrum.
What values do you bring to the evaluation of a philosophy?
Do we already know all the virtues there can be? (Is “the first time” or are “the good old days” already done, or has the definitive One Best Man already lived, or has the last prophet already spoken the One True God’s final word on many matters?) Or is it important that people be able to explore and discover new kinds of virtuous people to be?
Are cities crucial, as I think, or is living in harmony with nature in some sense that might privilege the nomad and the primitive better?
Or what?
I’m not aware of too many things,
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box.
Religion is the smile on a dog.
I’m not aware of too many things,
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Choke me in the shallow water
Before I get too deep.
What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are – or what?
I’m not aware of too many things,
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks.
Religion is a light in the fog.
I’m not aware of too many things,
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
Choke me in the shallow water
Before I get too deep.
What I am is what I am.
Are you what you are – or what?
Don’t let me get too deep.
– Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians – What I Am
A brief diversion, on suicide. I think this is a dead end for discussion of the war we are in and the enemy we are up against.
I don’t think suicide is particularly Islamic. I think that Buddhists, Shinto-ists, Christians, Jews and Hindus have just as good a suicidal warrior potential as Muslims, or more so. The achievements of the warriors of the Emperor of Japan make our present opponents look like a bunch of Nancy boys by comparison.
Muslims are supposed to be the dominant killer beast on the planet. They should command, forbid, threaten, make war, attack, kill, plunder, extort and so on – victimize and not be victims.
Suicide is awkwardly matched with that boastful supremacism. It is a modern tactic, deriving from weakness combined with bottomless hatred and aggressive ambition. So it is only half-Islamic, and in a sense humiliating and very open to criticism.
I think it’s tempting to focus on suicide because it’s shocking and hateful to us, and because it’s something we could potentially reproach the enemy with, and draw many implications from that might also look bad for the enemy.
I think we should resist this temptation.
Even if, on balance, a foe can reasonably be called hateful, not everything that is hateful will be true of him. To begin to think as though any hateful label could legitimately be attached to the foe is to set out on a path that leads to becoming a blind creature of hate oneself.
Even if we are tired of hearing it said, dishonestly “this is not Islam, this is a distortion of Islam,” there may come a time when that is the plain truth and we should accept it.
On this issue, I think that time has come.
Our enemies use suicide tactics for reasons common to all humanity (such as the idea of giving up something to get something, and giving up something very valuable to get something very valuable) and because such tactics are effective in shocking and hurting us. That’s all.
If our enemies occupied America, Australia and so on, and they could kill as they pleased with impunity, would they do that, or would they for obscure philosophical reasons continue to go in for suicide killings? They’d kill with impunity of course – and with an increased sense of piety and probity, for doing things the way they should be done.
So suicide is accidental and not essential to what we are up against. We could easily get our enemies to stop doing it – just not at a price we are willing to pay.
#44 from Achillea:
Losers & Winners
David Blue “I think religion ought to suit losers, because most people are in one way or another at one time or another – and many people treasure for life who and what helped them best when they needed it the most.”
Achillea: “Speaking from personal experience, I can certainly say that’s true.”
Same here. “Works for me”/”worked for me” is hard to knock.
Achillea: “The Islam I’m speaking of in the ‘bad’ context is militant Islam (whatever proportion of the religion that might represent).”
OK.
Achillea: … “Where, to me, ‘loser’ religions and the rest part company is what happens after that, especially in terms of results. A religion that consistently turns losers into functioning, contributing members of society I don’t really consider a loser religion. A religion that consistently turns losers into disaffected menaces to society I do consider a loser religion.”
Now I’ve got you.
I still don’t agree, but that’s because I’ve come to see moderate and radical Islam as a strategic threat, though only radical Islam is a tactical threat. For a religion that was strategically set up to prosper with and within wider society, I agree, a tendency to manufacture disaffected “Menaces 2 Society” is a loser characteristic. But I think Islam whether moderate or radical is ultimately set up to win against and over the top of everything that is not itself, therefore I file the same tendency you noted – and I agree with you on this – into the column of its assets. It’s strategically coherent.
For the individual though, in nations like Australia or America that have no intention of being pushed over any time soon, something that changes you from just being down for a while – and hey, most people eventually get the blues in one way or another – to being a menace that should be trodden down, that’s a loser option.
And I agree that radical but not moderate Islam is a loser in that sense.
I don’t think out minor disagreement is relevant to this thread, so I’ll drop this topic.
#44 from Achillea:
‘Good’ vs. ‘bad’ revisited
Achillea: “Since religion is just philosophy with candles and a dress code…”
(laughing out loud) That’s brilliant.
Only about 90% correct though, and even then only if you take a very broad view of what might be included in philosophy. (He says, lighting a candle…)
Achillea: “, that brings me back around to trying to define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ philosophies. Results. If we postulate ‘happiness’ and ‘intellectual/spiritual growth’ as good things (which I don’t think anyone will seriously argue with), then a given philosophy can be judged as ‘good’ to whatever extent it fosters those characteristics (in its followers or otherwise) and ‘bad’ to the extent it ignores or discourages those characteristics.”
Well, I asked for your evaluation criteria, meaning your values, and that’s a clear answer all right.
Obviously in many areas the difference between out opinions would be marginal.
On the problem of Islam, I’m guessing that female genital mutilation does not agree with your priority on happiness, education consisting only of the Koran (or for girls methodically stultified education) does not agree with your priority on ‘intellectual/spiritual growth’, and you would probably think there was something not quite right about Islam’s high priority on slaughter and subjugation for all polytheists and idol worshipers.
Neither of us would be eager to entrust ourselves to the goodwill and religious tolerance of Hamas (“… Hamas, all Jews to the gas! …”) unlike these wise men. (link)
In sum, defining Islam as a “good” or “bad” political philosophy becomes an easy call.