Freedom and Destiny

It was a beautiful sunny May day in my hometown and I was doing a little grocery shopping.  Walking back home with my two full bags I noticed the young girls trotting around in their frilly dresses, showing off their shaved legs, painted toenails and "cruel" shoes.   A thought flitted through my mind "the genes controlling those women want to get replicated".  Then it occurred to me that the genetic material sets up the behaviour but the way it is expressed is culturally mediated.  Go to a different culture---Punjabi, Hindi, or Chinese, and you'd have different shoe styles, different types of clothing---salwar kameez,  saris, perhaps, or, a cheongsam.  But the same genetic "push" would still be at work.

My genes are so hot to replicate!!!!

A moment later, my memory generated a random thought about something I'd read on-line earlier and I was feeling anger towards some dorky politicians.  (Our government recently decided to defund the Round-Table on Industry and the Environment because it has repeatedly recommended the use of carbon pricing to combat climate change and the Conservatives don't even believe in what they refer to as "so-called" climate change.)  This sort of thing makes me spitting mad and brings up all sorts of dark emotions aimed at various people.

At this point it occurred to me that I was responding to a cultural cue in much the same way as those girls were with regard to shaving their legs, painting their toenails and wearing a frilly dress.  That is, there is some sort of genetic "push" working in me and my culture is manifesting it through me as anger towards the leadership of the country.  Perhaps it is the constant "push" by inferior males to assert control over the dominant ones.

The Prime Minister and I

I don't know how far I can push the idea of genetics, though.  I suspect that there  is a point where we become predominately if not exclusively cultural creations.  (I wonder if I was angry at the Prime Minister specifically because I was walking by pretty girls?  Maybe one of them would sleep with me if I beat him senseless in front of her.  Somehow I doubt it.)

After thinking of women as culturally mediated gene replication units, and myself as manifesting culturally mediated "beta male" aggression towards political "alpha males", I began to ruminate about how much of our interior life is dominated by culture.  As luck would have it, at this time I passed a young mason who had just finished floating and brooming a sidewalk.  He was wearing a hard hat that he had put on backwards.  No doubt this has something to do with "hip hop" culture.  I don't understand exactly what it is, but I do find it rare for young males to wear a hats the "right" way anymore.  And now that I think of it, I can't see any objective reason why someone finishing a sidewalk needs to wear a helmet anyway.  What is going to fall down on his head?  The helmet's orientation is a signal that they guy is "hip", and the helmet's very existence is a signal that he is a tradesman.

Later on, I was walking down the street and I saw a "tough" guy walking on the sidewalk ahead of me.  He was short, skinny, had a significant tan (a street person?), quite a few tattoos, and a very significant scowl on his face.  He got to the corner just as the "walk" signal changed to "stop" and stomped on across the corner.  I thought that he was "daring" car drivers to try and hit him.  But then it occurred to me that he might be so "scattered" that he was oblivious to the traffic signal.  It also occurred to me that if someone complained about his behaviour, he would probably get very angry and aggressive, maybe even violent.   After a moment's reflection, however, it occurred to me that instead of just being a "dick" he might actually be someone who has been pretty badly jerked around by life and who has never learned even the basic skills necessary to get along with others.  Instead, life may have taught him that the best way to survive is to have a volcanic temper so people will leave you alone instead of attempting to prey upon you.  An instant later, it occurred to me that if he was or wasn't manifesting any of these behaviours in his life, the way I was reading them "into" him simply because of his appearance showed I was certainly in the grip of some significant cultural conditioning.  (I'll never know if I was right or not in my "read", but that that doesn't invalidate the fact that my reaction was culturally programmed.)

The reason why I'm indulging in all this "stream of consciousness" stuff is because I've been having a conversation with my fiancee about the nature of "free will".  She got all interested in this because of a talk she heard by Sam Harris on the subject.  I originally didn't find the talk quite so interesting, because I've

been aware of the incoherence of the concept of "free will" since studying it at university.  But I did find it exciting that at the very end Sam was making the connection between our understanding of free will and our legal system.  This isn't a terribly subtle thing to figure out, but it does seem to have evaded popular discourse up until now.

The problem is that our legal system is based on the assumption that there are these independent, totally autonomous beings known as "people" who freely choose to do one act as opposed to another.  People who freely choose to break the law are "criminals" and people who freely choose to follow the law are "good citizens".  Harris, and I, would argue that this way of looking at the world is at odds with everything we know about how the human mind operates.

First of all, there is the inductive or scientific argument.  That is as follows.  It might be that people choose to act in a certain way because they are constrained by either their biology or conditioning.  If it is a question of brain chemistry or childhood trauma that caused the behaviour, then how is it free?  Let me give two examples that seem to indicate that this in fact could be the case.

Sometimes people who have brain trauma or take certain types of drugs exhibit wild mood swings, and sometimes these swings result in violent behaviour.  Indeed, there is a body of opinion that the US soldier who murdered many Afghan civilians recently did so because he had suffered from brain trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and a specific type of anti-malaria drug that is specifically contra-indicated for people who have suffered concussions because it has been shown in the past to lead to mood changes and violent behaviour.

Secondly, people who have had a history of savage abuse sometimes have a very hard time controlling their anger, which leads them to do terrible things.  I read once about a robber in New York City, for example, who held up a convenience store and totally gratuitously turned around and shot the clerk dead while on the way out.  During the trial there was no doubt at all about who did the shooting, as the whole thing was on video tape.  The jury was howling for the perpetrator's death.  But during the sentencing hearing a lawyer introduced evidence about the childhood of the shooter.  As a child he had literally spend years locked into a tiny cage in the basement of his parent's home.  Once the jury found out how badly the person had been abused, they were more than willing to sentence him to life imprisonment.

If people do extreme things because of some sort of morbidity in the brain, or, because their childhood conditioning predisposes them to act that way, how can we labour under the illusion that they freely "chose" to act that way?  And if we can allow that people's freedom is constrained in these, extreme, circumstance, then doesn't it make sense that less severe behaviour may be the result of less severe, but equally important, conditions?  Maybe people shoplift because their brain chemistry gives them some sort of specific predisposition to such a thing (poor impulse control---ever heard of manic/depression?)  And maybe being around adults who routinely "push the envelope" and "take risks" reduces the anxiety that a child feels when thinking about doing something risky.  If this is the case, then it would seem that there is far from a "level playing field" when it comes to making those sorts of snap decisions that can result in someone's life going down hill pretty fast.

The second set of arguments against free will are deductive or philosophical in nature.  That is to say, if the idea that underlies our understanding is contradictory or incoherent, then we should be willing to entertain doubt that we are saying anything of value when we use it.  Certainly, we should rethink any laws or policies that our society enacts on the assumption of free will.

It would seem that if when we talk about "free will" we are saying that there is some sort of "live" choice involved.  That is to say, that a person who chooses to either do "a" or "b" really could choose one or the other.  But if the person chooses to follow course "a", we are left with the question "did he choose to choose to follow course 'a'"?  If he did, then did he "choose to choose to choose to follow 'a'"?

This might sound like a silly, semantic argument, but what is being raised is the issue of "causation".  That is when I "choose to choose", I'm saying that the way our minds work would assume that we have to have a reason to do something, a "why" we choose to do something.  But once we start asking why, we end up in an infinite regress---something like the old lady in the nursery rhyme who swallowed a fly.  You cannot explain anything with an infinite regress, because all you are doing is pushing the reason for doing something off into the deep, dark past.

Let me flesh this out with an example.  I have chosen to write this blog entry on the subject of free will.  But the reason I did is as a result of a whole range of other choices, such as, for example, proposing to my fiancee who put this particular bug in my ear a couple weeks ago.  (One of the several thousand things I love about her is the fact that we have these intense conversations about stuff like this.)  And the ideas that I am raising are a result of things like the books I have read and the instruction I received at university.  And, in turn, I choose to read some books as opposed to others, and to study philosophy at university instead of tool and die making at college.

In other words, if we look at our "free" choices they tend to be the result of a chains of previous choices that are also the result of earlier choices.  Each of these previous decisions was also the result of historical happenstances too----courses that were offered in one semester, books that were on sale in a second-hand store, random conversations at parties, etc.  The point is that it is hard to reconcile the idea of radical choice with chains of causation.

If, on the other hand, we suggest that decisions are made without the influence of causation, we have another problem.  Suppose that we do make decisions "just because".  By removing the "reasons" for doing something, the only way we can explain why we do anything at all seems to be random chance.  And if we do things totally at random, it is hard to see how this is any freer than simply doing things because we have to.  This is because "freedom" seems to include some element of meaning.  Personal freedom includes the concept of personal volition, and it is hard to see how people choose one action over another if they do it totally at random.

The deductive argument leaves people stuck with two, equally unappealing positions.  They either have to admit that every choice they make is constrained by an infinite number of earlier choices, or, else that their freedom consists of not much more than throwing the dice and accepting what comes up.  The inescapable result is that there seems to be at least some element of inevitability in our behaviour.

As Harris rightly points out, if we accept that there seem to be at least severe limitations on people's ability to freely choose one course of action over another in any given situation, then this makes a mockery of the whole concept of "guilt" or "innocence".  This, in turn, wreaks havoc with the notion of "justice".  How can we call someone "guilty" if we admit that if he had had a different set of circumstances leading up to him "choosing" to commit a crime, he would have chosen differently?  Similarly, how can we say that a punishment is "just" if we admit that it appears that the person being judged seems to have been pretty much doomed to commit the act.  Punishment just seems like a gratuitous act added onto an already tragic chain of events.

"Tori" Stafford

I've been thinking especially hard about this issue since there has recently been a court trial that involves an especially sad crime.  In my home town, across the street from my little brother's house there was a family that included a very cute little girl.  Her name was Victoria Stafford, but the media instantly shortened her name to "Tori".  As you can see, she was impossibly cute.  (I feel a little ashamed perpetuating this disgusting exercise in sentimentality, but I'm hoping that the point of this essay will justify adding my bit to the mountain of vile exploitation.)  One day she disappeared on her way home from school.

Terri-Lynne McClintic

Michael Rafferty

At first the police put their spotlight on her parents but eventually some video camera footage was found of little Victoria being led off by a stranger in a "puffy" down jacket.  Eventually this led to the arrest of a woman by the name of Terri-Lynne McClintic.  She, in turn, led the police to Victoria's body and a man by the name of Michael Rafferty.  

From what I've seen in the press, it seems to be that McClintic is a woman who is totally devoid of any self-esteem who seems to believe that she is totally doomed.  As the medieval Catholics would say, she is consumed with "despair", which was considered the worst of the deadly sins because once you are in the grip of it, you give up even trying to be a good person.  Rafferty, on the other hand, seems to be someone who is consumed with sexual desire and who has been damaged by learning how easy it is for a good-looking man to manipulate women.   This strikes me as a tremendously toxic mix as it connects a woman who is willing to be used as a tool with man who is able and willing to use her to pursue perverted desires.

The trial is over now, both Rafferty and McClintic have been sentenced to life sentences.  What really creeps me out is the way the media has been falling over itself to report people's "jubilation" that "justice has been served".  This sickens me.  Stafford is still dead, and two other people's lives have been totally ruined.  I feel absolutely no sense that anything worthwhile has happened.   One of the few takes I have on this trial that does make some sense to me came from a crime reporter from the Globe and Mail.  He calls Rafferty an "empty, hollow psychopath".

I'm not a psychiatrist and neither is the reporter who made that statement.  But from what I can tell from the Wikipedia article on "psychopathy" , there seems to be a genetic trait that results in people becoming predators on the rest of society because, among other things, they get bored really easily, tend to aggression and violence, are very good at manipulating people, and, are not be afraid of getting caught if they break the law.  Most importantly, they don't have any sort of internal moral compass.  That is to say, they know in some sort of theoretical sense that torturing little girls to death in order to get your rocks off is a bad thing, but they don't feel any sort of emotional revulsion at the actual act of doing so.

This last point is important, because the legal definition of "insane" doesn't apply to this situation.  An "insane" person has to be someone who is so out of their heads that they didn't even understand what was happening.  One Canadian example that occurred recently involved a fellow on a Greyhound bus who was convinced that a fellow passenger was a demon sent from Hell, so he cut his head off in front of a busload of horrified onlookers.  The killer was declared insane, didn't stand trial and was sent to a mental hospital instead.  (He is now on medication and has responded so well to treatment that he has recently been granted day parole.)

But I find this distinction pretty hard to accept.  It seems to me that a person's emotional response to a given situation is pretty tightly wound up with whether or not someone really does understand whether it is "right" or "wrong".  It seems pretty obvious to me that ethical statements are always emotive (i.e. "emotional") in nature, otherwise they simply wouldn't be "ought" statements but would instead be "is" ones.  (This is the classic definition of the difference between moral statements and statements of facts.)

Moreover, there seems to be a genetic component to psychopathy.  Scientists seem to have discovered different hormonal and brain physiology qualities between psychopaths and the general public.  Moreover, there is an evolutionary explanation for the existence of psychopathy.  Male psychopaths have an enhanced ability to reproduce in human society because their lack of empathy and ability to manipulate allows them to seduce a great number of women and spread their genes throughout the population without having to worry about supporting the children.

Sadly, there is no way to treat psychopaths.  At one time talk therapy was tried, but it proved to be counter productive in that all that happened was that the patients learned how to be even more manipulative in their dealings with others.  And one of the symptoms of psychopathy is an immunity to punishment----jail or even the death penalty are simply not credible threats.   But just because we cannot help them, doesn't mean that we need to exult in their being found guilty.  They are products of forces over-which they have no more control than the forces that shape our lives.  It is just that they are dangerous.  As Sam Harris would argue, we don't feel hatred against hurricanes or tornadoes, but we do take steps to protect ourselves from them.  In a similar way, we need to lock up criminals to protect ourselves, but we don't need to think that we are in any sense "superior" to them.

So what has all of this to do with Daoism?  A fair amount, oddly enough.

I've been scanning through A. C. Graham's translation of the Liezi and as luck would have it, I read chapter 6, "Endeavour and Destiny".  As Graham points out in the introduction, the authors of the Liezi are arguing for a fatalistic worldview.  This position is in contrast with the Mohists who felt that virtue was rewarded by Heaven, and the Confucians who felt that while Heaven was often indifferent to people's behaviour, we are still able to decide to do good.  The Liezi's point of view is that whatever controls our fate is completely and utterly indifferent to our well-being, so there is no hope of good being  rewarded.  Moreover, the book argues that people's reactions come from their innate nature, which is unchangeable.

In the case that I have mentioned above, it is certainly the case the little Victoria Stafford could not have done any sort of evil thing that would justify her awful fate.  With regard to McClintic and Rafferty, Liezi would argue that they never really did have any chance to avoid their behaviour.  She was doomed to be putty in someone else's hands, and, Rafferty was doomed play out his anti-social tendencies.

The only response that Liezi suggests is for people to understand that they are doomed to their fate and to accept it graciously.  In one of the examples, two men are contrasted:  Pei-kung-tzu and Hsi-men-tsu.  The latter has the "golden touch" and prospers in everything he does.  The former has the opposite effect, everything he tries to do fails.  Eventually, this Pei-kung-tzu becomes bitter and asks why their fates are so different.  The sage Master Tung-kuo argues that the only real difference is luck and nothing else.

The effect that this has on Pei-kung-tzu is profound, however.  As Liezi says

When Pei-kung-tzu got home, the coarse wool he wore was as warm as the fur of fox or badger, the broad beans served to him were as tasty as rice or millet, the shelter of his thatched hut was as shady as a wide hall, the wicker work cart on which he rode was as handsome as an ornamented carriage.  He was content for the rest of his life, and no longer knew which was honoured and which was despised, the other man or himself.  (p124)

For the Daoist, the only real control that we have over life is how we mentally react to it.

Oddly enough, I would argue that that isn't exactly true.  How we react to the teachings of Daoism is also a function of who we are, which is determined by fate.  Master Tung-kuo understood this point, for he said of Pei-kung-tzu he was "a man to whom you need to speak only once is easily awakened."  

So like those pretty girls I saw on the street, and like Michael Rafferty, I too am controlled by my fate.  I am doomed to pass on these little nuggets of wisdom that have come down to us from ages past.  This isn't merely "fancy speaking".  I have been absolutely obsessed by this blog post for about a week.  To me, thinking and writing about these sorts of things are as important as food and sleep.  I'm just glad that this is such a harmless obsession---there are far more horrible ones.

Environmental Vow 21: Practical Philosophy

A Positive Alternative:


I’ve rejected a variety of alternatives that some people have put forward in order fill the void left by the decline in old-school religious faith and patriotism.  But I have yet to make any sort of suggestion of a viable alternative.  This is the point where I unveil what keeps me, personally going.  I am fully aware that there are elements of my personal belief system that are more than a little “dodgy”.  Where these problems come up, I will attempt to spell out the conceptual issues.  Using the ideals that motivate my existence as an example,  I will then develop some generic parameters that will help others come up with their own personal solutions to the problems I am attempting to deal with in this essay.


Secular Daoism:


Years ago through an extraordinary series of unusual happenstances, I was initiated into a Daoist lineage.  This involved a martial arts club, a man who was very young and impressionable (myself), a couple Chinese immigrants with zero English language, and, a few other immigrants who’s ability as translators were abysmal.   Over several decades of trying to wrestle with the issues that I have raised in the preceding parts of this essay, I found myself increasingly identifying myself with the Chinese religious tradition known as “Daoism”.   As I expanded and deepened my understanding of this faith I found that I was not pursuing it as anything like what an “orthodox” Chinese religious Daoist would understand the term as meaning, but instead what a Westerner who had benefited from both the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment would understand it as meaning.  In addition, I found out that there are a fair number of other Westerners would similarly call themselves “Daoists”, but without understanding how different their worldview is from its Chinese counterpart.

It is quite difficult to exactly define what is or isn’t Daoism, which has led to a great deal of wrangling both between individual scholars, and, between scholars and practitioners.  Traditionally, the term has been associated with a small number of core texts:  the Dao De Jing, the Zhuangzi, and, the Liezi.  There are a great many other texts in the Daoist canon, but these (along with the Nei-yeh, which I will discuss further on), are a sort of “absolute basic” library that the religion is based upon.

The first complexity that people have to understand is that all three of these texts seem to have been created before there was a religion called “Daoism”.  Indeed, the scholarly consensus seems to be that if the authors of any of these books met folks who called them a “Daoist” they wouldn’t know what people were talking about.

Orthodox religious Daoists have tended to associate these three books with three different historicial personages:  Laozi, Zhuangzi and Liezi.  In contrast, modern scholars tend to believe that these texts are the result of an oral “wisdom tradition” that existed for a long time and which resulted in some editor writing down poems, pithy sayings and gnomic stories that he had heard from others.  In turn, the books were then changed by editors over many years as different people came out with improved “editions” until finally an “approved” version was codified by a single specific person.  At that point, the process of mutation stopped and we end up with the versions we have now.

Again, what these books are about is another complex question.  Probably the best way to characterize them is to say that they are about finding the practical “rules of thumb” of life that allow someone to live with a minimum amount of friction both with other people and the world in general.  Some of these rules can be summarized as follows:#

• Our understanding is limited, so limited that we often don’t even understand how limited.  As a result, it is important to be humble in our assumptions about how the world operates.
• It is generally a good idea to avoid unnecessary effort----more harm is done by doing too much than by doing not enough.
• The world operates by various laws or general principles.  Someone who understands these laws and principles can accomplish a great deal by working in harmony with them. 
• Conversely, people who try to do things by fighting against these laws, tend to fail.
• A great deal of the ability that comes from working with these principles and laws comes spontaneously from within the individual who often cannot explain why he does what he or she does, or why it works.
• Having said that, the way to develop these spontaneous abilities usually seems to come from sustained, dedicated practice.
• While sometimes violence is necessary, it is inherently a bad thing.
• Emptiness and passivity are of at least equal value---if not more---than substance and action.
• What passes for conventional wisdom is of very little value when it comes to making important life choices. 

These general principles can be applied to just about every element of human existence, from warfare to gardening.  As a result, people from all strata of society from different times believe that they have learned important life lessons from studying these books.   In effect, they are representatives of a type of literature that was very important in the ancient Western world, but which has since died out:  practical philosophy.

People often find it hard to believe, but at one time philosophy was considered a very practical field of endeavour.  It was practical because it dealt with the very important issue of how people were supposed to live their lives.   To give someone a flavour of this sort of practical wisdom, consider the following quotations from the School of Stoicism:

• "Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life."    Marcus Aurelius
• "Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise."  Marcus Aurelius
• "Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always to take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock."  Seneca
• A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation…you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.  Seneca 
• "Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men's desires, but by the removal of desire."  Epictetus
• "Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them."  Epictetus
• "That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away."  Seneca the Younger
• "Virtue is nothing else than right reason." Seneca the Younger

The reason why most people haven’t heard about this sort of philosophy is because it was persecuted and pretty much stamped out by the early Christian Church.   After the first Roman Emperor, Constantine, converted to Christianity, there was a period of transition that pretty much ended in the reign of Emperor Theodosius, who issued an edict closing all philosophical schools and pagan Temples across the Empire.  There seems to be some scholarly debate# about whether or not the Library of Alexandria was destroyed at the same time, but the general consensus seems to be that the transition to Christian orthodoxy seems to have been a time when there was a great deal of persecution (either formal or informal) against both the schools of philosophy and paganism.


It isn’t hard to understand why.  These ancient schools tended to elevate reason above authority, which would have been seen as a tremendous affront to the authority of both the Church hierarchy and the revealed doctrine of Christianity itself.   Beyond that, there were schools that went to the point of actually arguing quite cogently against the existence of any God at all:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
- Epicurus [341–270 B.C.

Obviously, an overtly atheistic philosophy would be anathema to Christianity.  But just as unnerving for early Christians was evidence that the Gospels had been directly influenced by the philosophical school known as Cynicism.


Consider, if you will, the following parallels between Cynic philosophers and quotations from the Gospels.#

• It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it. (Luke 13:19)
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• However small a seed is, once it's sown in suitable ground, its potential unfolds, and from something tiny it spreads out to its maximum size... I'd say brief precepts and seeds have much in common. Great results come from small beginnings. (Seneca)
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• And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:27/Matthew 10:38)
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• If you want to be crucified, just wait. The cross will come. If it seems reasonable to comply, and the circumstances are right, then it's to be carried through, and your integrity maintained. (Epictetus)
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• But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. (Luke 6:24/Matthew 6:2)
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• The King, said Diogenes, was the most wretched person there was, surrounded by all that gold, yet afraid of poverty. (Dio 6.34)
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• Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. (Luke 6:20/Matthew 5:3)
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• Only the person who has despised wealth is worthy of God. (Seneca EM XVIII 13)
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• And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. (Matthew 10:28/Luke 12:5)
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• What tyrant or thief or court can frighten anyone who does not care about his body or its possessions? (Epictetus)
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• Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If someone slaps you on the cheek, offer the other as well... Love your enemies, and do good, and lend expecting nothing in return. (Luke 6:27-29/Matthew 5:39-44)
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• A rather nice part of being a Cynic comes when you have to be beaten like an ass, and throughout the beating you have to love those who are beating you as though you were father or brother to them. (Epictetus III xxii 54)
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• How shall I defend myself against my enemy? By being good and kind towards him, replied Diogenes. (Gnomologium Vaticanum 187)
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• Someone gets angry with you. Challenge him with kindness in return. Enmity immediately tumbles away when one side lets it fall. (Seneca, de ira II xxxiv 5)
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• It's a pitiably small-minded person who gives bite for bite. (Seneca, de ira 11 xxxiv 1)
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• Socrates said, Follow these instructions, if you are willing to listen to me at all, so that you may live happily, letting yourself look a fool to others. Let anyone who wants to, offer you insult and injury... If you want to live happily, a good man in all sincerity, let all and sundry despise you. (Seneca EM LXXI 7)

The danger that Cynicism poses to Christianity comes from the fact that it is obvious to anyone who is exposed to it that the Jesus of the Gospels seems to have come out of a tradition that was extant before his birth.  If so, then it becomes very hard to believe that Christ is in some sense a divine messenger with a startlingly unique message.  Remove the claim that Jesus is in some non-metaphorical but actually literal sense a “son of God”, and he becomes one person amongst many who have taught in the town squares of the Roman Empire.  And if Christ ceases to be divine, then the divine authority of the Christian clergy disappears too----and with it all of their temporal power.   It is obvious that the cynics---above all other schools of practical philosophy---had to be erased from the popular knowledge of Christendom.

Since practical philosophy inevitably leads to at least questioning of orthodoxy and at “worst” atheism, it has suffered De facto persecution insofar as atheism itself has been persecuted.  And it is only very recently indeed that many people have been able to openly proclaim their atheistic beliefs.#   Indeed, it is currently the case that seven US state constitutions ban atheists from holding public office#.  More tellingly, it is considered “political suicide” for any politician to openly proclaim his or her atheism.  This is supported by a 2006 poll that suggests that as many as 50% of American voters would not vote for an atheist---no matter how eminently qualified---for the position of President.   In fact because of this pressure, only one member of the US Congress, Pete Stark, has ever openly proclaimed himself an atheist.  Add to this the pressure one can receive from family, friends, colleagues, etc, and it becomes obvious that there is a significant price to pay for openly expressing anything like an atheist point of view.

In the face of this still very real, but receding, climate it makes sense that practical philosophy as a genre of literature is only recently coming back into people’s consciousness.   The Christian is a jealous God.  And his followers are all too willing to punish anyone who tries to usurp His role in dictating what is and is not a moral way of life.

The Symbolic Life

I've been having a long conversation with my fiancee about an idea that has been stuck in my head for years.  She suggested that I do a blog post about it in order to put it down on paper and see what other folks think about it.

I first thought about the way people's lives can become symbols that result in societal change as a result of doing some pretty intensive research about Mohandas Gandhi for a course I was teaching called "The Activist Toolbox".   One of the things that really struck me about the guy was the way every aspect of his life seemed to be geared towards projecting a specific image.

Most people have seen pictures of Gandhi spinning yarn.  What they don't know is that this was an act of political theatre designed to mobilize the people of India to support home rule.

When the English first took over India, it had a thriving textiles industry based on handicraft production.  Ordinary people spun yarn during their spare time.  In turn, Cloth was woven from it by agricultural labour during the rainy season when no work could be done on the fields.  Under the exploitative system created by the English, both yarn and cloth was being created by English factories which out-competed with the work done by these men.  As a result, they were being driven into utter destitution.  (Gandhi refers to the poor of India as "the skeletons".)  Gandhi believed that the answer to this rural poverty was for people to go back to spinning their own yarn and sell it to the rural poor, and then buy the cloth for their clothing.  The cloth is known as "kadhi".  Gandhi was dead serious about this idea----to the point where when he was president of the Congress Party of India he once devoted an entire forty minute talk to silently spinning cloth.

Spinning cloth to help the poor was one part of this project, but I suspect that it wasn't the most important. The British Empire was a tremendous "wealth pump" that sucked money out of India and into the home country.  One of the ways it did this was through enforcing an empire-wide "free trade" zone that meant that existing (English) businesses always had a competitive advantage against emerging (colonial) ones.  This meant that money was constantly bleeding out of India to buy cheap cloth from England.  And this constant flow of capital out of the country meant that there was no money to invest in Indian factories for not only cloth making, but anything else.  This kept India undeveloped and poor.  (At the same time, America had strong import duties against England that allowed an indigenous industrial base to be built.  This decision to create a trade wall was one of the reasons for the American Civil War---the South wanted to have free trade with England so it could sell its cotton there and buy cheap goods;  the North wanted trade barriers that ensured that Southern cotton went to New England mills and the South bought its goods from there too.)  The independence movement in India decided that one of the best ways to wean India off the Empire was to convince large numbers of people no longer buy English cloth.  To that end, the Congress Party organized demonstrations where people burned their English clothing and pledged to only wear Indian-made cloth.

For an entire generation in 20th century India, khadi was the only mode of clothing 

This happy convergence of poor and upper class concerns over cloth allowed the Congress Party to create an important symbol for independence.  People who supported independence could identify each other through their clothing of choice.   When people complained that this cloth was too expensive (because it was hand made), Gandhi decided to wear only a Dhoti  to show that even the poor could take a visible part in the independence movement.  The importance of cloth to the independence of India is shown by the law that says that the only cloth that an Indian flag may be made from is khadi.

A side of Gandhi people rarely see!

Wearing a dhoti made of khadi wasn't the first time that Gandhi tried to make a point through his clothing.  Earlier in his life he was a supporter of the British Empire.  He felt that if Indians made a sincere effort to adopt the British worldview that they would eventually become "citizens of the empire" and have the same rights as Englishmen.  To that end, he traveled to London and studied to become a lawyer.  In the process, he studied how to dress and act like a proper English gentleman.  Part of this involved adopting English clothes.

Not only did Gandhi attempt to make himself into a model Englishman, he also demanded that his wife and children did too.  In My Experiments with Truth he writes, if memory serves me right, that they complained bitterly about this.  For example, the socks and shoes made their feet sweat and smell bad, but he was convinced that it was necessary.  This was part of an entire agenda that also included things like working to recruit Indians to serve in the British Army during various wars.  Eventually, it was his experience in South Africa that convinced him that Indians could never be equal partners in the Imperial system so the only option was home rule.  At that point he decided to give up his Westernized clothing and adopt Indian dress.

No dhoti, but a turban!

I've made a big deal about Gandhi and khadi because it is a clear example of how the symbolic can work in social transformation.  It isn't as if symbols don't regularly exist in our society, but they are so deeply embedded in it that people usually have a hard time seeing them.  It's like a fish not being aware of water or us not thinking about the air.  They surround us, yet they are invisible.

USA (Basic black!)

When you start thinking about people living as symbolic representations of specific social values, they seem to be everywhere.  Consider, for example, a judge presiding over a trial.  Let's look at some of the robes used by judges around the world.

Canadian Supreme Court Judge

French Supreme Court

Why exactly do judges wear robes?  The more formal robes of the Canadian and French judges hearken back to the court robes worn by the aristocracy.  These were worn not just because the gentry were rich and wanted to show off.  They were designed to show the status of the individual and thereby assert dominance in a very stratified and class dominated society. The founding fathers of the USA wanted to break from the aristocratic idea.  But they didn't discard the use of robes altogether, because they still wanted judges to project a sense of "gravitas" and authority, so American judges tend to wear simple, black gowns.  

Another example of "life as symbol" comes from the way people exhibit sexual dimorphism.  In animals this sort of differentiation between the sexes comes from "locked in" genetic characteristics.  In human beings the same process is at work, but it is mediated culturally.  In contrast to mallard ducks, female humans tend towards showy display and men tend to be drab.  

This dimorphism is certainly on display weekend nights in my home town where it is not uncommon to see hordes of very drunk young women wearing flimsy dresses that barely extend beyond the crotch and  tottering on stiletto heels.  The reproductive drive is genetic, but the form that the sexual display takes is culturally mediated.  And as a culturally-mediated phenomenon, it has led to the use of clothing as a symbolic tool in social transformation.  

A scene from a "slut walk"

A couple years ago a police officer in Ontario made a stupid comment to the effect that fewer women would get raped if they didn't tend to dress like "sluts" when they go out at night.  This so outraged the community that women pretty much spontaneously started to organized "slut walks" all over the world in an attempt to pound it into the heads of authorities that women have the right to dress as they please and to mock the idea that rape is caused by how women dress.

I've offered all of these examples as a means of explaining why it is that I think that it would be a tremendously useful tool for environmentalists if people were willing to take on the task of becoming "living symbols" in the same way that supporters of Indian independence, judges and "sluts" do.  There are already a fair number of people who are willing to undertake a significant personal commitment in order to help build a sustainable society.   For example, there is a group called "the compact" who have decided to refuse to purchase any new capital goods for a set period of time.  Here's a blog by a woman who has made it her goal to try and live her life totally without the use of plastic.  Here's a website that allows people to make public declarations about how they are going to help "green the planet".  

My suggestion is that the environmental movement should do something like the Indians did and develop some sort of symbolic representation of their beliefs in order to identify to all and sundry exactly how they feel about Mother Nature.  It could be a piece of clothing, a symbolic piece of jewelry, a tattoo, or maybe just a symbol that everyone could adapt as they see fit.  But to wear it would be to express to everyone that sees them that the bearer is serious about sustainability and they are living their life in specific ways in order to promote it.  

I'm not about to make any suggestions about what this sort of symbol would look like, simply because if it is to mean anything and have any sort of legitimacy, the process of creating it will have to be one that involves a great many people.   

I would suggest, however, that if the symbol was going to accomplish anything, it will have to be understood that anyone who takes it on has taken a pledge that identifies a "bare minimum" necessary to honestly wear it.  If the token just because "aspirational" instead of identifying a serious commitment, it won't be anything more than the various ribbons people are supposed to wear in order to show support for things like curing breast cancer or supporting the troops.   I think that the symbol should be like the uniform of a Marine----something that is not worn lightly and really means something.  

Again, I won't suggest what the pledge should entail, as anything that people will adhere to must be the result of a collective process.  If people are involved in creating something, they "own it" in a way that they do not if it is just an option to accept or reject lightly.  In my conversation with my fiancee, for example, I suggested that pledging to have no children should be one element.  She responded by suggesting that the pledge be to only have one child, which would bring the population down and allow these people to continue to exert direct influence on future generations through their children.  I countered by suggesting that people who choose to remain childless will not only help with over-population, but they will also free up time in their life that they can use for activist work.  (I don't have an answer to this particular issue, but I think that our short talk illustrates the sort of informed discussion that would need to go into creating a pledge list that people would be willing to commit themselves to following.)  

I'm tossing out the idea on the Internet now.  What do readers think?  Do you see some value in environmentalists consciously living their lives as symbols?  If so, what form could the symbol take?  And what sort of pledge do you think people should have to take in order to be able to wear it?

Environmental Vow Part 20: The Role of Narratives

Unfortunately, the “flip flopping, broken promises, and perceived hypocrisy that are an inevitable bi-product of this endless round of patronage, coalition building and fundraising results in a deep cynicism amongst the over-whelming majority of voters.  And cynicism is absolutely caustic towards any attempt at self-motivation.  If the political system cannot even get people to go out and vote, how can we hope that it will ever convince people to make significant personal sacrifice in order to deal with environmental issues?


The Role of Narratives

It is important, however, to not become totally fixated on the role of money or patronage in politics.   There are primary and secondary causes to many events.  In the case of politics, a politician may gain the support of a patron or a donor and use that to gain more power in the community of voters, but he also has to find some way to gain the support of that donor or patron in the first place.  The way this is usually achieved is through the development of some sort of narrative that cements a relationship between the two.

A “narrative” is a story about the world that neatly encapsulates a broad range of very complex and poorly understood issues together and provides handy and immediate answers to almost all questions.   These can be small “conceptual rules of thumb” such as “all people on welfare are lazy bums”, or, “small businesses create most of the jobs in an economy”, “everything gives you cancer if you give enough of it to rats”, or,  “the world’s problems could all be solved if the rich paid their fair share”.


Politicians also create narratives to explain who they are to the voters.  In Canada three Prime Ministers were very successful at composing narratives that they used to encourage voters to develop loyalty to their “brand”.  Pierre Trudeau invented himself as a “devil-may-care” intellectual, in part through media stunts such as his famous May 7th, 1977 pirouette that he did in front of photographers but behind the Queen at a G7 conference in London England.  Another example is Jean Chretien who, although being a very successful corporate lawyer constantly styled himself as the “little guy from Shawinigan.  Brian Mulroney, another successful corporate lawyer, “rebranded” himself after losing his first bid for the Conservative party nomination by buying a used car, a cheap suit and describing himself as being “the son of an electrician from Baie-Comeau”.   In the USA, Barack Obama did much the same thing through his successful campaign that implied that just as it seemed to many Americans impossible to elect a black man president, yet it still could happen,  so too it is possible for the country to solve the huge problems facing it (i.e. “the audacity of hope”.)


If the narratives diverge enough from one another, they become ideologies, and politics becomes radical.   The communist ideology is a narrative that talks about professional revolutionaries, inexorable laws of history and class warfare.  Nazi ideology talked about the clash of races, the mystical identity of a “folk”, the need for an absolute leader or “Fuhrer”, and the need of “living space” for a Master race.    The difference between a narrative and an ideology, IMHO, is that an ideology doesn’t believe in the ability of different narratives to co-exist in a given society.  It might be that ideologically-driven parties might co-exist for a while as political parties in a democracy# but this is only a temporary truce brought about by relative weakness.  Once any of these groups gains enough power, the “gloves come off” and politics starts to “come from the barrel of a gun”, as Mao once remarked.


In a functioning liberal democracy, however, the narratives are not so extreme that there can be no room for compromise between the two.  Indeed, in some societies there seems to be very little to separate the different narratives from one to another.  That is why in some political systems successful politicians are able to “cross the floor” and go from one party to another without destroying their careers.  In other systems, the divide between parties becomes so poisonous that every single decision of government becomes a opportunity to “score points” and inflict as much damage as possible on the other side.  Ideally, a democratic systems exists between these two opposites.  Enough divergence so that voters have more to choose from than just “tweedle-dee versus tweedle-dum”,  but not so much that there is never any room for compromise on any issue.


The Importance of “Walking the Talk”

Politicians have to be careful about narratives, however.  They can also turn against them if the public believes that they are not living up to what is expected.  Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien were able to preserve their “brand” until the day they retired, but Brian Mulroney ended up being crucified because of the dissonance that the public believed it saw between his portrayal of himself as a humble “boy from Baie-Comeau” and what they perceived as “ly’n Brian”’s lavish lifestyle while Prime Minister.   Trudeau was able to date celebrities and live an extravagant life as a playboy, but that didn’t clash with the narrative he’d constructed about himself, so it was acceptable.  Mulroney didn’t have that luxury because he’d put so much energy into explaining his humble origins to voters.  Time will only tell if Obama’s “audacity of hope” will survive all the compromises with the establishment that he has made since gaining office.

If narratives are so important to electing politicians, perhaps it would be possible for a mainstream politician to be able to craft some sort of narrative around environmental issues that would allow them to “ride a green wave” into office.  Unfortunately, I fear that there is a significant problem with environmental issues that make it a special case, one that makes it almost impossible for a politician to mobilize a campaign around.

To understand this issue, consider the case of Al Gore.  His documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” came out in 2006 and talked about climate change as a moral imperative, which was a new thing in mainstream circles.  Unfortunately, in 2007 it was revealed that Al Gore’s home was a monstrous energy pig that consumed a little under $29,000 worth of energy per year.   In Gore’s defense it has been argued that the building is large, houses two home-based businesses, and that the cost of electricity and natural gas is inflated because it uses more-expensive “green” sources.  But the fact is that a great many “ordinary folks” have home businesses and use environmentally-friendly energy sources without blasting through anything like this amount of money.  It is pretty clear that Mr. Gore doesn’t really “walk the talk”.  If he does see global warming as an ethical issue, then he should view himself as an immoral, evil man.  Otherwise, he is not much more than yet another hypocritical politician spinning a narrative in order to build popular support.  The revelations about his lavish lifestyle pretty much undid most of the good of his documentary.


There is a very important point here.   When someone tries to cast their politics in terms of morality, it is absolutely imperative to make sure that she at least tries to live according to the ethical values that she is suggesting everyone else should live up to.  If she does not, she not only undercuts public support for her individual leadership, she also undercuts the ethical ideal being espoused and the very idea that ethical considerations should be considered at all.   Hypocrisy leads to cynicism, and cynicism leads to disengagement from whatever process that is view as being dominated by hypocrisy.  Since politics is dominated by hypocrisy, is there any wonder that larger and larger fractions of the body politic refuse to vote?


The problem for Mr. Gore, however, is that even if he did live a more modest, eco-friendly lifestyle, he’d probably have to live a life with a much larger carbon foot-print than most people simply in order to be able to “play the game” on the scale necessary to be able to do things like promote his documentary.  Film makers, distributors, donors, government panels, etc, all expect people to jet all over the planet and have a large home to entertain important guests.  People who live in modest, energy efficient homes, refuse to drive a car, take the train, and refuse to fly simply cannot get the “ear” of important people.  Yet at the same time, it is impossible for ordinary folks to take seriously any enviro-prophet who doesn’t seem to even try to live in harmony with nature.   In effect, even if Gore were not a hypocrite, he would still be on the horns of a dilemma.    On the one hand, he could never have gained the power and authority in society to be able to organize and promote something like “An Inconvenient Truth” without “living large”, but on the other, what he has to do to build his “brand” up to the point where he would have the power and fame to promote his documentary dramatically undermines the message.


This leaves the environmental politician with a really big dilemma.  What sort of narrative can he or she create that will defend him or her from the charge of hypocrisy while at the same time retaining the visibility necessary to exert real influence on society?

Infantile Spirituality

In my last post I gave voice to some concerns that have been rumbling in my heart for several years.  As I thought about what I'd written and about the comments that readers sent to me, something deeper struck me that I thought I'd share as well.

I've been a "Leftie" most of my life.  More to the point, I'm really a "bleeding heart" or what Maggie Thatcher would call a "wet".   I get emotionally-engaged with people who suffer.  This needn't be someone right in front of me, I get very upset when I consider the plight of people I've never even met.  Indeed, I get upset when I contemplate hypothetical situations---starving, poor, oppressed people, injustice of any sort.

This has led me down some interesting rabbit holes in my life.  At one time I actually tried to live the life that Jesus suggests we should----I gave a lot of money to the poor, I would invite homeless people in to live with me, etc.  I learned after a while that if people do choose to live like Jesus said they should they will end up being "eaten alive" by the poor and needy---just like he was.  (Remember all the crowd scenes from the Gospels?)   Not wanting to end up on a literal cross, I decided to do what everyone else does, and set my boundaries a lot wider.

When I analyze my feelings when confronted by injustice I notice two things.  First, I feel a lot of empathy in that I always end up imagining myself in the situation I see the other person.  Secondly, I feel a great deal of anger and outrage.  Sometimes I move to a third stage, which is fear that the world is a nasty, cruel, place that is indifferent to the suffering of individuals.  

The more I think about it, the more I think that the first two reactions are attempts to divert my attention from the last one.  It's better to feel sorrow for others and anger against whomever is harming them than contemplate that it is just happenstance---perhaps temporary---that I am not in the same boat.  I notice this fact time and time again when I find out that the world is just not a "warm and fuzzy place".  It was this outrage that fueled just about everything that I have ever done in politics.  And that outrage ultimately kept me from facing up to the idea that life is inherently tough and I am going to die, probably after a lot of pain.

The path we walk as individuals is ultimately like a mine field.  We never really know if the next time we put our foot down it may end in an explosion that may injure, maim or kill us.  Our job can disappear, we can get sick, an accident may befall us, or the people we love can suffer similar problems, etc, etc.

Paradoxically, people involved in progressive politics tend to spend a great deal of their life successfully ignoring this fact.  Of course, it is true that collectively people can do a great deal to make life less precarious if they work together.  We can have universal healthcare, pensions, unemployment insurance, etc, but this never seems to be be enough to totally eradicate suffering from the world.  No matter how much we try to make the world a better place, others are constantly trying to undo that work;  and ultimately we, and everyone we love, are going to die.  Even the Jesus of Gospels admits this fact, "The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me" (Matthew 26:11).

This grim reality surrounds us like a bad smell.   But we aren't conscious of the stink all the time.  Sometimes we forget about it and get "caught up" in some experience that allows us to forget all about the "fallen" nature of the world and our own mortality.  This is where the other side of religion kicks in, the spiritual path of mysticism.

As one Buddhist monk once explained it to me, activism is like trying to deal with the problems of walking on a stony road by covering it with carpet.  As he explained it, learning to tame the passions through meditation was like putting on a pair of shoes.   Obviously, it is a lot easier to wear shoes than to cover the entire earth with deep pile shag.

When we forget about the precarious nature of human existence it is possible to feel a sense of "oneness" with the world.  We walk through a forest on a sunny, nice day and all seems well.  We embrace our lover and life seems good.  When I think about it, just about every good experience that I have had in my life involved feeling "at one" with what I was doing.  In contrast, the quickest way to remove that feeling is for me to remember that I am an individual human being who is at best a participant in life, but more often a mere observer.  The trick, therefore, is to find some way to control the mind in order to maximize the time you spend in "oneness" and minimize the time you spend in alienated contemplation.

When I was a young man I spent a decade of my life trying to understand religious experiences.  I did a master's degree in philosophy on the subject and spent a lot of time trying out various flavours of religious practice.  I had a great many different experiences that could be described as "mystical", but ultimately found myself on the "outside" of all of these traditions.  What I believe I learned from this period of experimentation was that all the people I met in these groups ultimately lacked the sense of critical rigor that I was bringing to the subject.

Recently, it has occurred to me that this sense of "connection" that people seek in mystical practice and which I sought through my experimentation comes from our earliest experience in our mothers' arms.  Certainly some psychologists maintain that the first important part of human maturation comes when the child begins to differentiate his or herself from her mother.   And the more I think about it, I wonder how much of my religious and political sensibility comes down to not much more than trying to recreate that early sense of comfort.

And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the cultural matrix that supports the religious life is overtly aimed at trying to recreate that childhood experience.  Certainly Christianity is rife with examples that seem to support this idea.   Priests are called "father".  I understand that the Aramaic word that Jesus is shown using to refer to "God", abba, translates rather literally as "daddy".  Consider the veneration of "Mother" Teresa.  Other religions encourage a similar sort of infantile veneration.  In my case the teacher in my school of religious Daoism was similarly treated with parent-like veneration and in response he treated all his students like wayward children.  (To cite one example, I can remember him sleeping on the floor of the lobby connecting the male and female dorms at our retreat centre so he could keep tabs of the adults so they didn't sneak off for illicit sexual trysts.)

If I accept that the ritual forms and hierarchical organization of religious institutions are designed to create an infantile sense of "oneness", I should also consider whether spiritual practice is also designed to create a similar state.  Consider the following Wikipedia synopsis of the spiritual teachings of a Carmelite Nun, Bernadette Roberts:

The ego, matured through life experience and spiritual practice, falls away to reveal the unitive state, the oneness or wholeness of the self in unity with God, a state characterized by the feelings of love and subtle ecstasy. This was the end of the Christian journey — or so Roberts initially believed — and from this point we can see where Roberts travels beyond the limits of doctrinal Christianity. The Self, the mature human in a state of union with God, also falls away. This is the import of Roberts' work. So what does this mean and what is left when there is no-self? Fundamentally the unitive state is still a form of dualism — Self and God — it means that an idea or archetype of God is still captured by the psyche. Fundamentally this unitive state is nondualistic - in which the self and God are One, not two - "I and my Father are One," one without a second, without even the concept of one. Roberts experiences the falling away of the idea of God simultaneously with the experience of the falling away of self — when there is no self, there is no God. For someone wholly devoted to the spiritual life and to God, to discover that there is no God, not one iota of subtle conception of God left to grasp at or attach to, was a particularly horrendous and terrible experience and is described in detail in "the experience of no-self". The experience is of a raw, pure and unadulterated reality without the imposition of concepts and ideas. Gradually this state, this initial loss, cleared to become a profound understanding of reality itself. In place of "unity" with God comes identity with God — a state she calls seeing with God's own eyes. But neither the ego-based sense nor the spiritualized self is "God". Instead, God is Reality itself, of which the human person is a single cell

After all, what could the experience of a newborn child be, but one of a total lack of "self" and total "unity" with your mother?

The spiritual practices followed by these religious groups seem to be pretty good at helping people feel better about themselves.  Buddhists, Daoists, Christians, etc, who do regular spiritual practice look to the eye as being calmer, happier people.  But the price, in my personal experience, is a sort of "flattening" of their critical faculties.  Those calmer, happier people seem to very often prone to being taken advantage of by their spiritual teachers---financially, sexually, etc.  The sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic church and Buddhist sangha both reveal that followers of both faiths are so dis-empowered that they are willing to allow their religious authority figures to do things to them that they would never allow anyone else to do.

Nor do deeply spiritual people seem to be terribly good citizens.  They rarely seem to be on the "right side" of history.  It is Marxists, trade unionists, secular humanist types who fight for human rights---bye-and-large---not the deeply spiritual.  (I first noticed this when I was involved in a battle to save a Jesuit retreat centre.  It wasn't the Catholics who did all the heavy lifting, but rather people outside of the tradition.  Indeed, the woman who ran the retreat centre was opposed to the lawsuit and the Catholic school board forbade its employees from getting involved in any way shape or form.)

This doesn't really make any sense if the goal of religious practice is to become a better human being.  But if, instead, the real goal of spirituality is to recreate the experience of a baby in its mother's arms, then it fits perfectly.

What then do I suggest we should be seeking instead?

I'm not sure I know.  But I can take a stab at making some suggestions.

First of all, I think that a more "mature" sort of life should be based on attempting to deepen our ethical grounding.  Consider the following "thought experiment":  Would you do the "right thing" if it meant that you would end up going to Hell?  If not, then are you living an ethical life?  Or are you just trying to be a "good boy" in order to get a lollipop?  This isn't a hypothetical question.  How many people in ages past had doubts about the value of burning "witches" and heretics, yet "went along" because they were afraid of being damned as a heretic himself?  How many people in the Evangelical or Roman Catholic churches today have doubts about discriminating against gays but don't speak up for the same reason?

In other words, is virtue your own reward?  If it isn't, why not?

Secondly, instead of having "oneness" as an ideal is it possible to develop another?   What about clarity?  Or dignity?  Or wisdom?  I admit that I find it hard to fill the gap left by wanting to feel like the world is a warm, comforting place that looks out for my best interests.  But ultimately my conscious mind has to accept that this is simply not true.  And at that point I find that I can have flashes of something that is like a sense of calm acceptance based on a gimlet-eyed appreciation of the true nature of existence.  What is more important?  Seeing the truth, or having a warm and pleasant lie?  Again, this sounds a lot like "virtue is its own reward".

Finally (at least for this blog post), instead of trying to find some ultimate "Truth" that sets us free, perhaps it would be a better ideal to try and live a life that adds a grain's worth of truth to our society's collective store.   The great value of scientific research is that it is cumulative.  Why can't we have as our ultimate ideal the idea that we are participants in a great cultural enterprise aimed at trying to become collectively more wise rather than seeking some sort of personal salvation or enlightenment?

If we accept a different set of ideals, like the ones above, then it might be possible to construct a different sort of personal practice.   This could be a practice that people can pursue in order to give meaning and stability to their lives, but which will not damage their critical faculties by encouraging infantile consciousness.   The more I think about this sort of---for want of a better term---"spiritual practice", I cannot help thinking that this is like the Chinese ideal of "kung fu", which is key to the teaching of philosophical Daoism and which is best expressed in Zhuangi's description of craftsmanship.    

The Seduction of Religion

Over the years I've tried to stake out a position for myself as being somewhere in the middle between identifying myself as a "religious Daoist" and a "philosophical Daoist".  To a large extent, this has been because I believed that there is a great potential for good in the existence of religious institutions.  I have always admitted that in practise religious bodies rarely live up to this potential, but I have always thought that the isolated tremendous good that some individuals do shows just what could be done if religious organizations finally reformed themselves.

I no longer think that this is possible.

I've come to this conclusion because I've changed my opinion about what it means to be a religious "believer" and to live in a religious "congregation".  By way of an explanation, I have to explain where my interest in religion comes from.

I was raised by a totally non-religious family.  I don't mean that they were atheists who had consciously rejected the Christian church (or any other religion, for that matter.)  Instead, they were people who simply didn't think about anything that would be considered "spiritual", "philosophical" or "high-fallutin".  They were simple country folk who did not bend their minds towards anything except the daily grind for existence.

I learned from their example the wisdom of Socrates dictum "the unexamined life is not worth living".  People who do not think "ultimate thoughts" end up with minds that are little more than jumbled-up attics filled with the rubbish that they have been exposed to during the random events of their life.  People who do not develop the habit of self-introspection, and who have never learned to separate a good argument from a bad one ultimately have only one option:  just "follow along and do what you are told".  This makes you tremendously vulnerable to any sort of social disruption.  It also takes away any sort of brakes over strong emotions.  People who aren't terribly thoughtful tend to be "drama queens", which makes life incredibly miserable for anyone who has to live either with them or is at their mercy in any shape or form.

Living around very emotional, not terribly thoughtful people for most of my childhood awakened a strong urge to try and emulate the character "Spock" from Star Trek.  The great thing about Spock was that he was not only committed to being logical, he obviously had real problems doing so.  For example, he lost his marbles over sex, as in the episode where he dragged the crew to Vulcan and ended up fighting Kirk over a woman.  As an adolescent boy, I certainly understood the conflict between instincts and rationality, and how no matter how much I tried not to, I would end up "losing it" in one of several ways that still bring waves of embarrassment and shame to this day.   If Spock had really been the sort of "soul-less robot" that people referred to him in the television series, he wouldn't have had any appeal for viewers.  It was the fact that he was a passionate man with real problems who still tried very hard to live up to a specific ideal that made him a hero to so many people.

And working through the logic of the situation (please, no pun intended), the series writers had to develop a rationale that would explain exactly where this character's "love of logic" came from.  I their decisions through various episodes and movies ended up building up the edifice of a Vulcan "religion" based on logic.  This makes a sort of sense in that it is only reasonable to assume that any sort of cultural norm requires some sort of institution to pass it on to future generations.  In my own case, this is how I began to view religion, as an institutional framework for passing on the ethical and social teachings of some great teachers of the past.

Dominic Crossan

This is where I take my leave of Gene Roddenberry and enter the realm of religious scholars like Dominic Crossan, Karen Armstrong, Marcus Borg, and, the members of the Jesus Seminar. 

Karen Armstrong

These voices of "progressive" Christianity were pretty important to me for many years.  I read their books and wrestled mightily with the ideas that they presented.  The Jesus that they discussed was a figure who manifested a very radical response to the problems manifest in Judea during the Roman Empire.   He didn't identify himself as being a "God", but as an ordinary person.  He didn't come completely from the Jewish tradition, but also incorporated aspects of Greek Cynic philosophy.  The stories of the New Testament were not factual accounts of history, but rather archetypal stories that get people thinking about the forces around them.  The Jesus of Christianity was someone who was very concerned about the poor and would be considered a "Leftie" or "Commie" today.

Marcus Borg

My problem was that I read these books and as a result created an artificial "air religion" that has never existed in real life.  It was only when I met real, honest-to-God Christians that I realized that almost no one in any Church understand Jesus and religion the way these academics do.  (Indeed, Dominic Crossan stopped being a priest so he could marry.  Marcus Borg is now a philosophy professor instead of a theologian, and Karen Armstrong left her nunnery because it the discipline was impossible for her to bear.)

In actual fact, the vast majority of people who call themselves "Christians" do not read the Bible and wouldn't understand an archetype if it hit them over the head with a rotting carp.  For them the story of Jesus's arrest, trial and crucifixion wasn't a story about how religious and civic institutions react to moral imperatives----i.e. angry leaders afraid of their position, and, spineless bureaucrats unwilling to overcome the mob----but rather that those damn Jews killed God.  And the most important part of Christianity isn't "love your neighbour" and "help the poor and weak", but rather that of "don't have sex unless it is sanctioned by the church".  If you really want to know who is the authentic interpretor of scriptural orthodoxy, it isn't a scholar like Crossan, it's a political leader, like the Pope .

As a result, the values of the institution are inexorably drawn towards points of view that strengthen the hold that the church has over the individual believer.  Consider, if you will, a point that I have raised before in this blog:  Mother Teresa versus Oscar Romero.   Teresa supported an extremely conservative point of view that maximized the power of the Church and voiced the "party line" over the importance of regulating human sexuality (e.g. when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize she said that the greatest threat to world peace was "abortion".)  In contrast, Oscar Romero took the line that the church should be on the side of the poor and oppressed.  His "prize" wasn't universal acclaim, television documentaries, etc----instead, he was gunned down while saying mass in a cathedral.  Teresa was fast-tracked into sainthood, whereas Romero will probably never be made a saint---or at least won't until people totally forget exactly what it was that he got killed for.  My read of the Bible says that Romero was by far the most in line with the teachings of Jesus, yet his life doesn't teach Catholics to "shut up and do what they are told", whereas Teresa's does---which is why she is a saint and he isn't.

Another example has to deal with the sex abuse scandals plaguing the church.  People often fixate on the behaviour of individual priests and argue that celibacy is what is to blame.  This is a misread of the facts.  The problem isn't the individual offender----the odd person in all walks of life has problems controlling their sexual urges.  The real issue is that the institution protects priests whereas other parts of society---such as school boards---are designed to protect the child.  And priests are protected for the very real reason that if people start to see priests as ordinary humans instead of as exalted beings who are better than ordinary church goers, the whole religious hierarchy starts to fall apart.  If a priest can't be trusted around the choir boys, then why should we accept their interpretation of the scripture?  And if the priest is suspect, then what about the Bishop?  Or the Pope?  

Exactly the same sort of statements can be made about every church that I ever looked into.  Each one ultimately has some sort of leadership that controls things, and theology invariably ends up warping itself to supporting the political structure.

Confronted by this fact, I investigated other religions, most notably Buddhism and Daoism. At first I found myself very attracted to both of them.  Neither has the sort of centralized structure of Christian churches and both have a theology that has a greater emphasis on personal study and investigation---through things like meditation.  But as I learned more about Buddhism, I found out that there are as many abuses by Dharma teachers as there are by Christian priests, many of which are documented in this excellent blog:  "Down the Crooked Path".  Daoism is too new in the West for many abuses to exist, but I certainly could see the potential during my involvement with the Taoist Tai Chi Association---which is why I left the group.

I went through a real phase of being upset about this state of affairs.  I think that we do need a way of handing over values to future generations.  Moreover, I feel that there is a real need to have institutions around that do good work for the poor and oppressed.  Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that there simply is no way we could reform religious groups to be able to do this.  Moreover, I think that I know why.

The first point to understand is that real charity is inherently anarchic.  That is to say, people do not "just" become poor.  Invariably they do so because there are institutions or patterns to their existence that force or encourage them to be poor.  In a society with significant inequality, there are economic and political forces that keep a fraction of the population from redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor.  These can be as simple and obvious as the rich paying off the police to "look the other way" when the nation's wealth is looted, or as subtle as lobbying Congress to write tax loopholes that allow someone to define their income in such a way that Warren Buffet pays taxes at a rate far less than his secretary.  Either way, if we are genuinely attempting to help the poor, we are also going to be empowering them as well.  And any institution that is engaged in really empowering the poor will not only be weakening the power of the leadership within that institution, they will also be encouraging other elements of that society to attack and weaken that institution within it.  Church leaders---even with the best of intentions---always find themselves worrying about whether their actions are "prudent" enough to preserve the institution.

This is why whenever there is a movement towards making the lives of individual people better, it is inevitable that the overwhelming majority of organized religions will be opposed to it.  The Church opposed trade unions, democracy, birth control, the end of slavery and just about everything else.  That is why the leadership of most churches support reactionary political parties.   It is also why when the relative influence of the Church gains ascendancy in a political party---as it currently does in the American Republican party---that party will invariably swing towards political extremism.

Not only does the structure of the church define whether or not it can honestly embrace the poor, it also means that it can never truly become a bearer of morality.  To understand this point, however, we need to understand just exactly what morality consists in.

People of Conservative bent often complain bitterly against what they call "situational ethics" because they believe that once people are taught that they are able to "bend the rules" based on a specific situation, total  chaos will inevitably result as people start to "make it up as they go along".  As I see it, the problem with this analysis is that it reduces morality to doing what you are told.  Moral behaviour is something very special, it is judging a specific behaviour based on a criteria that goes beyond mere utility and instead suggests that there is a code that someone is following because it is the right thing to do.  Now the problem with reducing doing the right thing, to simply doing what you have been told comes from the fact that doing what you are told to do doesn't have a moral component.  This is why the judges at Nuremburg refused to accept the "we were just following orders" defence offered up by the Nazi war criminals.  Even under military discipline, it is believed that normal people have a moral sense that allows them to make a distinction between a lawful and an unlawful order.  Indeed, Western military codes specifically make this distinction and suggest to soldiers that they have an obligation to ignore unlawful orders.

If a soldier is obligated to disobey an unjust order when he is under discipline during time of war, then surely an individual parishioner has an even greater obligation to ignore or disobey an unjust moral injunction laid upon him by the ecclesiastic hierarchy.   If your Church says that homosexuals should be abused and discriminated against, that women should continue to be forced to carry pregnancies to birth even if the baby is unwanted and will cause great hardship, or, that women should never use birth control even if the resulting high number of children will be a catastrophe for both her family and nation----then the moral obligation to "do the right thing" would seem to suggest that people disobey the "unjust order".  

This criticism of morality goes beyond the practical issue I raised earlier.  Even if the Church were to miraculously stop being concerned about prudential issues such as whether a given teaching weakens the power of the institutional church, it still wouldn't be able to overcome the inherent problems that come from teaching morality as a set of eternal truths.  That's because morality just isn't something that is revealed through some sort of objective discovery process.  The revealed Ten Commandments simply do not have enough moral sophistication to cover all situations (which is why they and the other rules in Deuteronomy could never work as a legal code.)  Instead, as people are confronted by a new situation, they have to analyse the key components and decide what they feel is the moral thing to do. 

The point is that morality is not defined, it is discovered.  And as such, we cannot teach people what the right thing to do is in each situation.  What we can do, however, is teach people the right general way that they can approach an issue so that they can work out the best answer for themselves. Our legal system understands this point because it functions not just on the basis of regulations passed by politicians but also by having those laws modified through the rulings of case law.  

The way to teach this discovery is through entering into a discussion or dialogue, either with others or within ourselves, in order to ascertain the which side of a given debate can marshal the best arguments in defence of their position.  Again, unfortunately, any religious institution simply cannot allow for this sort of methodology because it will invariably undermine the authority of the institution.  Church is not a grad seminar and parishioners simply cannot be allowed to debate scripture with the pastor, or else there soon will not be any authority left for either the local priest or the Pope in Rome.  The same can be said about Buddhist monks and Daoist priests.

This leaves me on the horns of a dilemma that everyone with a religious bent has to face sooner or later.  Will they learn to keep their mouth shut so they can carry on in the faith?  Or will they take the harder, moral road and walk away from the church and stick it out on their own?

In a sense I made that decision a long time ago.  I have called myself a "hermit" because I refused to make the compromises necessary to stay in a group.  But between then and now I have kept a bit of a mental connection with the ideal of religious fraternity.  Now I finally reject it.  I think that if you really want to be a genuinely spiritual person you have to accept that each and every relationship you make has to be created on its own merits and cannot lean on the clap-trappery of church, robe, title or lineage.  In the same way, every act of charity and benevolence has to justify itself.  If you help the poor, do it because it genuinely helps the poor.  Don't do it because Jesus said you should or because you are want to buy a place in heaven.  (Certainly, don't do it because you think you can get a job out of it.)

Luckily the key texts of Daoism never really did have any sort of religious background.  Instead, they were written by people who probably had never seen a religious Daoist in their life.  (The Zhuangzi, Laozi and Liezi were written before the creation of an organized, Daoist religion.)   This makes it easy to follow the teaching while ignoring the religion, as many people do. This includes me too from now on.  Now I have to decide if I want to sell off my various statues, close down my altar and so on.

Decisions, decisions, decisions---.