Why Hypocrisy Should be a "Sin"

In my last post I dealt with my suspicion that "conservative", especially people of religious bent, do not see hypocrisy as being nearly as bad a thing as "liberals" do.  Since I posted it, I've done a bit more looking around and it seems like a lot of people blogging from the conservative point of view agree with my analysis.  For example, take a look at this blog post, entitled "Hypocrisy, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Left" .   The author pretty much makes my case, but from the point of view of a conservative Christian.  Take a look at the following quotes.

I am suggesting, then, that hatred of religion is at the root of the Left's excessive and unbalanced animus against hypocrisy. 

 ---in our culture, dominated as it is by liberals and leftists, most of the Seven Deadly Sins are not reckoned sins at all.  Given that sin is a religious concept, there cannot be sins for those who deem religion buncombe from start to finish.  But one can believe in vice without believing in sin.  I think it is safe to say that most Americans today do not consider any of the Seven Deadly Sins to be vices, with the possible exception of sloth interpreted as laziness rather than as acedia.  Take gluttony.  Americans are by and large gluttons as one can observe by going into any public place.  And yet how many speak of gluttony as a vice as opposed to an 'eating disorder' to be treated by stomach stapling, etc?  This is a fit topic for a separate post.

This is an interesting question, "Do liberals no longer believe in 'sin'?   Or 'vice'?"

First, it's important to try and understand the difference.  It would appear, from a quick Google search, that the core concept of "sin" has to do with the relationship between a person and a commandment of God.  A "sin" occurs when someone does something God has told her not to do.

Two interesting points.

First of all, what happens when someone's sense of "right and wrong" conflicts with what God has told him to do? In the Bible the best example comes from the story of Abraham and Isaac. For those of you who don't know the story, God asked Abraham to murder his only son as a sacrifice. Abraham sets out to do the deed and God stops just before the deed is done and says "Just fool'n".

 What would have happened if Abraham had told God the following "I don't care if you are Jehovah.  I don't care if you will torture me for all eternity for saying this.  But I will not kill my own son.  Such a deed would be perverse and evil."   In saying so, Abraham would at the same time be committing a sin, and, acting in a moral manner.

Lest this seem a weird, hypothetical example, consider the bind that religion puts many parents of gays into.   They may very well genuinely love their children, but at the same time, God's commandment tells them to treat them as if they are pariahs who's instincts are the result of demonic influences.  Again, the moral thing to do (e.g. try to understand your child and love them as you would have others love you) conflicts with the dutiful thing to do (e.g. cast them from your home and disown them.)

The second issue that arises comes from the question of how someone actually decides what is and is not a commandment of God.  As I see it, there are four avenues for learning God's will.  Each of them, IMHO, has significant "deal breakers".

First of all, people say that the will of God is revealed in holy scripture, like the Bible.  The problem with that is that if you make the effort to look at scriptures in a disciplined manner, it becomes obvious that they are the result of human activity----with all the contradictions and confusion that that entails. Once you start saying that you read the books in some sort of metaphorical manner and allow for the frailties of the human authors, the authority that says that this is "the word of God" quickly dissipates.

Even if you are the most adamant Biblical literalist, the fact remains that the book is filled with stuff that no one actually believes is the word of God and needs to be followed to the letter. Check out the following image.

It's not totally obvious, but this is a screenshot of a fellow who went to the trouble of tattooing the following quote on his arm:  Leviticus 18:22  “‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable."   What makes the picture funny is the fact that this fellow probably didn't read further in the book and come across this text:  Leviticus 19:28  "'Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD."  

If all religious believers don't follow ALL of the commandments of God, but instead pick and choose due to some other criteria, then how is it that they are following the commandments of God instead of that other criteria?  

If we aren't following the revealed scripture as the voice of God, what are we following?  Is it the tradition of whatever denomination we find ourselves in?   If so, why your tradition instead of another's?  And, if you look at the history and internal politics of any religious body you will invariably find that the tradition mutates and changes over time.  Does this mean that the law of God changes over time?   If it was a sin to eat meat on Fridays in 1912, why isn't it still a sin in 2012?  

If the rules change, then what is the status of someone who works within the church to change the rules? Is an activist who is pushing for the ordination of women a sinner up until he convinces the synod to make the change and then after that a righteous believer?  Is the only criterion for sin whether or not you are successful in convincing the church hierarchy to adopt your point of view?  

One final point of view would be to say that our conscience is the "voice of God".  But if that is so, then what about when different people say that their conscience tells them different things?   And what exactly is a "conscience"?  If I change my mind about something, does that mean that God has changed his mind about something?   Or does it simply mean that I now look at the problem in a different light?

After working through the above, it seems clear to me that I certainly do not "believe" in "sin".  First of all, because the term refers to the will of God---and I don't see any valid evidence for the existence of said God.  Secondly, even if I did believe in the existence of God, I don't see any valid way of divining exactly what his will really is.  Finally, I don't really believe that moral issues should be settled by appeals to authority anyway.   They don't work in math or physics, so I don't see why they should work in ethics either.  If we do accept this point-of-view, isn't uncomfortably like the Nazi "I was just following orders" defense?

But does that mean that I no longer believe in "vice"?   

This is an equally subtle thing to think about.  The author quoted above writes that Americans no longer consider gluttony a vice but instead see it as an "eating disorder".   He even suggests that the remedy is not longer an appeal to morality but rather "stomach stapling".  

I think that this is a significant over-simplification.  First of all, liberals do not lightly dismiss the concept of personal responsibility.  Instead, there has been a great deal of thought aimed at who is responsible for social issues like the current wave of over-eating.  But instead of simply placing all the blame on the individual, which is the attitude involved in the Church teaching about the Seven Deadly Sins, commentators have raised a whole host of complexities.  For example, how much of this epidemic is as a result of marketing strategies aimed at encouraging people to eat too much?

  

It's all very well to complain about poor people's greed when it comes to eating.  But this is the first society in human history where anyone but the wealthy has had the option to become overweight.  It seems simply mentally lazy (e.g. slothful) to just put the blame on the individual instead of trying to understand the entirety of the issue.  

I think the dividing line comes over free will.   Paradoxically, the theist wants to believe that all people have a radical form of free will that doesn't allow for any significant social or biological influence over people's ability to choose one course of action over another.  But they take away all of this freedom by introducing the idea of "sin" that reduces the entirety of this choice to whether or not one will freely submit to the absurd (in the sense of without rhyme or reason) direction of an unauthenticated authority.  As I've pointed out above, there really isn't any reason why one particular definition of "God" should be followed versus any other, so you end up having to believe whatever religious authority you happen to come across in your life.  

In contrast, the liberal has very little belief in free will.  He knows from scientific study that for all of our sense of freedom, we are tightly constrained by our biological instincts and social conditioning.  But in the midst of that knowledge, he is still willing to allow people to use their intellect to steal as much freedom as they can from the authorities around them by using the tools of inductive and deductive logic.   

And what exactly is happening when someone indulges in hypocrisy?  

I would suggest that what they are doing is experiencing some cognitive dissonance.  In the examples from my previous posts, the anti-abortion crusaders were coming up against some personal experience that should have undermined their previous assumptions about life.  But instead of taking this as a "learning moment" where they could seriously rethink the underpinnings of their moral code, they chose to simply do the mental equivalent of shoving their fingers in their ears while humming loudly.  

From the conservative point of view this is a simple "the mind is willing, but the flesh is weak" moment with very little ultimate consequence.  For the liberal, though, this is the fleeting opportunity for the person in question to exert real free will.  Until reality smacked them in the face, they probably couldn't be expected to understand how reality diverges from what they have been told.  But because they refused to take the opportunity to think things through and change their minds, they threw away their opportunity to be free.  

The reason liberals believe hypocrisy is the ultimate "sin" is because it is the throwing away of the few opportunities we have to grow as human beings.  It is also the process of denying that aspect of ourselves that makes ourselves so unique----the ability to learn and grow.  

Is Hypocrisy a Sin?

I recently read a blog post that reignited something that I've been thinking about for quite a while.

In a nutshell, Frank Bruni, writes about meeting someone from his college days who has gone through a tremendous transformation from rampaging Roman Catholic to agnostic.  The interesting "kicker" for the piece is that this fellow is a medical doctor who has performed abortions for years because of his experience dealing with women.

The part that is of particular relevance to me is a passage where this fellow told Bruni about his experience performing an abortion for an extremely vocal anti-abortion crusader.

He shared a story about one of the loudest abortion foes he ever encountered, a woman who stood year in and year out on a ladder, so that her head would be above other protesters’ as she shouted “murderer” at him and other doctors and “whore” at every woman who walked into the clinic.

One day she was missing. “I thought, ‘I hope she’s O.K.,’ ” he recalled. He walked into an examining room to find her there. She needed an abortion and had come to him because, she explained, he was a familiar face. After the procedure, she assured him she wasn’t like all those other women: loose, unprincipled.

She told him: “I don’t have the money for a baby right now. And my relationship isn’t where it should be.”

“Nothing like life,” he responded, “to teach you a little more.”

A week later, she was back on her ladder.

This isn't the only time that I've heard about anti-abortion crusaders going in for an abortion.   Here's a page about a study about anti-choice women who have come for abortions offering similar anecdotes.  And here are some of the quotes:

"In 1990, in the Boston area, Operation Rescue and other groups were regularly blockading the clinics, and many of us went every Saturday morning for months to help women and staff get in. As a result, we knew many of the 'antis' by face. One morning, a woman who had been a regular 'sidewalk counselor' went into the clinic with a young woman who looked like she was 16-17, and obviously her daughter. When the mother came out about an hour later, I had to go up and ask her if her daughter's situation had caused her to change her mind. 'I don't expect you to understand my daughter's situation!' she angrily replied. The following Saturday, she was back, pleading with women entering the clinic not to 'murder their babies.'" (Clinic escort, Massachusetts)

"We saw a woman recently who after four attempts and many hours of counseling both at the hospital and our clinic, finally, calmly and uneventfully, had her abortion. Four months later, she called me on Christmas Eve to tell me that she was not and never was pro-choice and that we failed to recognize that she was clinically depressed at the time of her abortion. The purpose of her call was to chastise me for not sending her off to the psych unit instead of the procedure room." (Clinic Administrator, Alberta)

 "My first encounter with this phenomenon came when I was doing a 2-week follow-up at a family planning clinic. The woman's anti-choice values spoke indirectly through her expression and body language. She told me that she had been offended by the other women in the abortion clinic waiting room because they were using abortion as a form of birth control, but her condom had broken so she had no choice! I had real difficulty not pointing out that she did have a choice, and she had made it! Just like the other women in the waiting room." (Physician, Ontario)

 "The sister of a Dutch bishop in Limburg once visited the abortion clinic in Beek where I used to work in the seventies. After entering the full waiting room she said to me, 'My dear Lord, what are all those young girls doing here?' 'Same as you', I replied. 'Dirty little dames,' she said." (Physician, The Netherlands)

 Usually I find that people who hear about this sort of thing have some sort of negative emotional reaction towards hypocrisy and leave it there.  But I have the sneaking suspicion that something very important is happening here.  I wonder if people who fall on the "conservative" line of thinking might simply not consider hypocrisy an actual sin.

I have wondered for quite a while if the divide between people often comes from people holding different sets of moral values.  I first noticed this with regard to a controversy in my home town involving the mayor. This woman, who was a neo-conservative absolutely loathed the small and large "g" greens who dominated city council before and after her term of office.  She got caught absolutely red-handed plagiarizing a speech that she delivered at some municipal function.  I remember that many of my friends were absolutely furious about it, but I noticed that most of her supporters seemed to be genuinely surprised that anyone cared one way or the other.

I live in a university town and most of my friends are intellectuals of one stripe or another.  In contrast, most of the people who supported this past mayor were involved in business.  I came to the conclusion that for writers, teachers and scientists, there probably is no greater crime than that of stealing the ideas of someone else, because this is the capital by which they make a living and define their standing in the community.  In contrast, for business people words and ideas are just tools for encouraging people to purchase their products.  In contrast, business people often think that levying any sort of taxation at all is a tremendous sin---perhaps this is because money (or capital) is their stock-in-trade.  Many intellectuals similarly cannot fathom this view that taxation is inherently sinful---since as long as they get value for the money, they consider it just the price of civilization.

Thinking about this example has got me thinking about the abortion one.

People who are pro-choice usually look at the examples I quoted above and see them as examples of complete moral bankruptcy.  But, I would suggest that is because people who are "liberal" in the original sense of the word put an enormous value on the concept of intellectual courage and curiosity.  Conservatives in general, and religious conservatives in particular, do not greatly value either of these qualities.  Instead, they value submission to authority and conformity.

I know that Christianity makes a great pretence about helping the poor, etc.  But if you look at the actual behaviour of the hierarchy of most denominations---especially conservative ones---it becomes obvious that over-riding teaching of the church is "Shut up and do what you are told!"   And the theology of the most rabidly anti-abortion denominations often seems to boil down to some sort of cosmic fascist state.  You must do as the great Fuhrer in the sky demands or else you will be sent to the eternal Auschwitz after your death.

Please note that when an institution is all about submission to authority, actual behaviour is of less importance than the attitude.  Rebels who reject the idea that they should be submitting to authority are far, far more dangerous to the status quo than criminals who, for one reason or another, end up breaking the rules.  (This is why political crimes are punished more severely than all others in totalitarian societies.)

If we understand this point, then it becomes obvious what is going on when someone who is a loud and vocal opponent of abortion has one.  The actual abortion itself is not nearly as bad as the fact that some people refuse to accept that the process is evil or immoral.  Abortion activists are ultimately protesting that women and doctors are putting themselves ahead of the revealed teachings of the church and making their own decisions about what is or is not a "sin".  After all, according to church teaching all people sin and the only route for salvation is through the intercession of grace.  Having an abortion might be worse than stealing a candy bar, but ultimately the Hitler in the Sky considers them both to be worth a ticket to the eternal concentration camp.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.  ~François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 1678

 The quotation above makes the same point.  If we simply understand that the word "virtue" means not some sort of universal or commonly understood truth, but rather the dogma of the institution you support (either the Roman Catholic church or the Republican party, for example), then "Hypocrisy is the homage that people pay to authority."   If you will not be a hypocrite, then you will invariably be a rebel.  And rebels are far more dangerous to authoritarian institutions than people who merely transgress the rules.

Looked at from this way, a lot of conservative behaviour makes a great deal of sense.  When anti-homosexual pastors and politicians get caught hiring gay prostitutes, their willingness to be furtive instead of rebellious means that they still support the hierarchy.  Similarly, when conservatives rail against government spending but wallow in the pork barrel for their constituency, the hypocrisy means that they are "team players" instead of dangerous "socialists" who want to throttle business.

I don't know where this insight leads me, but I have the feeling that it could be harnessed to improve the way people promote a better way of looking at the world.

For one thing.  A lot of people think that it is just enough to point out the hypocrisy and expect people to change.  But that doesn't happen because hypocrisy simply isn't a sin for conservatives.  That woman who got the abortion and then went back up on the stepladder to protest was a dutiful daughter of the church who suffers from original sin.  The real sinners are the "rebel angels" who think that they know better than the church about what is, and is not a sin.  Rubbing this woman or her fellow believers noses in their hypocrisy will not change their minds.

If we want to change people's attitudes about things like abortion, on the other hand, I think we need to go deeper than the issue itself.   Instead, we have to try to do two things.

Ideally, we should be teaching people to be "liberal" in the original sense of the word.  That is, we should be teaching everyone who will listen that they should be intellectually courageous and curious.  They should follow ideas where they go instead of being afraid of the implications.  The social consequence of this is that we need to develop institutions in society that encourage this sort of behaviour.  It isn't just the church that discourages critical thinking, our schools, the workplace, the bureaucracy, etc, all thrive on the model of "shut up and do what you are told".  Of course, none of this can change overnight, but until we understand the problem, it is impossible come up with a solution.

It is impractical to expect all citizens to become Socrates, though.  I would suggest, therefore, that we should also be developing role models and authorities who can counter-balance the authorities that conservatives lean upon.  People of good will often have the mistaken belief if we reject the authority of the Pope to pronounce on moral issues that no one should be able to do so.  But this misses the point that we appeal to authority all the time in life---doctors, mechanics, engineers, plumbers, accountants, etc.  Why should moral issues be any different?

The difference is that a plausible moral authority should be willing to defend her position using logical argument instead of an appeal to force.  The problem isn't that the Pope sets himself up as a moral authority, but rather that he is a bogus authority who's ultimate argument is "if you don't knuckle under, I'm going to kick you out of the church", and "God is going to torture you forever after you die".   In contrast, it might be practically impossible to work through all the complex reasoning that a philosopher goes through to justify a position (after all, how many people do you know who would make the effort to read a monstrous blog post like this one?), but if someone wanted to, the option is open.  We trust our mechanic to do the right thing, but if we wanted to, we know we could do enough research to understand why it is he says he has to do the things he says he needs to do in order to get the engine on your car working.

When I was a child my mother used to tell me to do things and when I asked "why", her response was to whack me and say "because".  The difference in attitude could be as simple as her saying instead, "there's a good reason, but I simply do not have the time to explain it to you right now", or even, "I don't really know how to explain it, but I do believe that this is the best course of action and I have a responsibility to give you direction until you get old enough and have enough experience and knowledge to be able to make choices for yourself."   You don't have to be Einstein to make this substitution.  In fact, it could just be a rote sentence that everyone in our society ends of saying without really understanding.  But the distinction is one that discourages empty submission to authority and hypocrisy, as such I think that we should try it.

Environmental Vow 22: Is Practical Philosophy Religion? Spirituality?

       This raises an interesting question, though.  If Christianity felt itself threatened by what I’ve called “practical philosophy”, was it because it is yet another religion?  Is it perhaps what people call “spirituality”?   Or is it something else altogether?   I don’t believe that these are trivial questions, because it highlights a problem that I have found in my own personal pursuit of Daoism.

First of all, it is useful to come up with a definition of “religion”.  The term generally refers to a complex belief system and how it operates within a human culture.  To a great extent, it deals with how a group of people, either at one time or over a long period of history, relate to one another.  The religion of Roman Catholicism, for example, refers to a large group of people who currently live all over the Earth, and also, who have lived from the time of the end of the Western Roman Empire up until the present day.  It includes a body of writings and traditions that govern the behaviour of individual followers of the religion, as well as a large institution that is hierarchically organized from the Pope in Rome to the altar boy in the parish church.

In contrast, “spirituality”, involves the interior life of an individual.  It comes from a person trying to make sense of the experiences of his or her life.  These experiences can arise from random events, from disciplined meditation practice, or they can be the insights and observations that the individual has gleaned from reading texts and/or interacting with other, perhaps more experienced practitioners.  It can be totally idiosyncratic and is sometimes at odds with the teachings and practice of a religion.  Or it can be completely in tune with these traditions and institutions.

Practical philosophy is often described as being from a specific “school”, such as Daoism, Stoicism, Cynicism, and so on.  But, I would argue, these schools are significantly different from religions for several reasons.  

First of all, adherence to a specific school of practical philosophy is a free choice based upon a personal decision that this specific worldview makes the most sense to the individual.  No one is born into something like Stoicism or Cynicism in the same way that someone is born into a Catholic or Muslim family.   In effect, the different tenants of a school of practical philosophy are descriptive instead of being prescriptive or credal.   People who know about such things will often talk to someone and make a decision that a person is a “a Stoic” or “a Cynic”# based on the way they look at the world.   In contrast, people are born and/or baptised as Catholics and they are trained/forced to learn to adhere to a specific definition of what it means to be a Roman Catholic.

Secondly, practical philosophy is taught through the exercise of reason.  This takes place in two ways, deductively and inductively.  The former is the process whereby someone comes to a conclusion through a logical reasoning.


For example, let’s look closely at the quotation I mentioned before from Epicurus:

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?

What the philosopher is telling us to do is to think through what exactly it means to say that some particular being is both omnipotent and good.  If a being has both qualities, then why, for example, do children still suffer?  If there is a reason why this has to be and there is nothing he can do about it, then what does it mean to say that the individual in question is “omnipotent”?  If, on the other hand, he is able to stop innocent children from suffering and he simply chooses not to do so, what does it mean to say that he is “good”?  In either case, we would be using the words “omnipotent” and “good”, respectively, in some sort of weird way that meant that we are not using the words as everyone else does.   And if we aren’t using these words in any sort of understandable way, what have we actually learned about what we are calling “God” when we describe him as being both “omnipotent” and “good”?   If saying that God is “omnipotent” and/or “good” really doesn’t mean much of anything at all, then does the word “God” itself mean anything?  If not, then why believe in him?

Inductive reasoning comes from looking at the world you inhabit and attempting to find evidence in favour of one point of view as opposed to another.   Take this example of a pithy Stoic saying by Epictetus:  "Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men's desires, but by the removal of desire."  This is a very different sort of thing in that it is making a statement of fact that cannot be either proved or disproved through logical inference.  Instead, the person who hears or sees this statement is expected to think about their personal life experiences and the people they have met, and try and decide if this statement is in accordance with his or her experience or not.  He might think about the time as a child he desperately wanted some sort of present from his parents, yet found that once he had it, it turned out that it wasn’t all that nice and that he pretty much immediately wanted something else.  He might think the same thing about the promotion he wanted at work or the woman he desired as a lover.

One important thing that should be understood about the deductive and inductive methods employed by practical philosophy is that neither one is a source of authoritative, revealed “Truth” with a capital “T”.  Instead, what the insight and wisdom that comes from this process is accumulated piece by piece as different people in a culture communicate and discuss their insights.  Eventually, a consensus emerges about what is and is not a good way of understanding the world around us.  In contrast, religious teachings are invariably “revealed” by the authority of religious prophets and sacred texts.  This is not to say that innovation and change doesn’t happen within religious traditions, but rather that those traditions will not admit that there is a process of innovation and change because to do so would weaken their authority in the eyes of believers.

To cite one example, consider the case of celibacy in the clergy.  In the New Testament most of the key figures were married and the only unambiguous statement on the matter is as follows:  “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife---” (1 Timothy, 3:2).   Various branches of the Roman Catholic church allowed marriage, until the assertion of Papal Authority in the high Middle Ages.  To this day, the Orthodox Church of Greece and Eastern Europe, which is every bit as old as the Roman Catholic church, allows its clergy to marry.   Knowledge of these facts are not widely promoted within the Catholic body, but instead, the clear suggestion is that celibacy is something that “comes from God” instead of being the result of historical political struggles within the Church power structure for practical reasons (i.e. to stop the priesthood from becoming an inherited position and to allow the Church to reassign a parish held by a priest on his death.)

The value of hiding behind the coat-tails of God comes from the fact that decisions that are made by man can be undone by man.  But if a political decision can be effectively sold as coming straight from God himself, any attempt to change a specific state of affairs ceases to be ordinary political activity and instead becomes an act of blasphemy.  This means that people who are unhappy with any specific element of the church either “suck it up” and accept that “God is mysterious”, or, leave the church altogether because they’ve “lost their faith”.  This second option is only recently available to people, as in times past this option would have led to being tortured to death as a “heretic”.  This gives whomever is in charge an enormous increase in their power.

Add together a lot of these different politically-arrived at decisions that hide behind the coat-tails of God, and you have what is known as a “creed”, or statement of faith for a religion.

Since many readers probably haven’t seen a creed, here is the “Nicene Creed”.  It was the result of a lot of wrangling and compromise at a conference (or “Council”) that was convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine the First.

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen

 English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC)

The importance of a Creed is as a yardstick or dividing line between heresy and orthodoxy.  As such, it is a tool for asserting dominance and control by an ecclesiastic authority over the rank-and-file membership of a religious group.  This particular creed was developed as a method for differentiating the official or orthodox church from the so-called “Arian heresy”, which taught that Jesus was not originally a part of God, but was instead created as a divine creation of God.#  As such, it was intended as deadly serious and had the effect of consigning many men and women to very painful deaths.    Not only was it intended to separate out heretics from orthodox believers, it serves as a form of thought control.  Orthodox believers who fall under the sway of a creed, are expected to live in an Orwellian world where they must learn to conform their thoughts to an official version of reality instead of following their ideas where they may lead them.

Practical philosophy is very different.  It involves thinking things through and following your insights where they lead you.   There is no physical compulsion involved.  If for some reason you simply cannot accept a specific idea, you are free to go your own way.  And people often do, which is why there are so many schools of practical philosophy.  There are many different religions and sects, too.  But they usually had to fight wars in order to gain the freedom to practice their religions.  In contrast, schools of philosophy have debates.  And success doesn’t come from winning battles and killing anyone who disagrees with you, but rather by having your ideas survive from generation to generation.  The existence of different schools of philosophy isn’t seen as proof of the devil’s ability to confuse people, but rather that life is very complex, people have very different life experience,  and people know very little.  As a result, even though people have gained hard-fought insights we know too little to assume that any of use really know any sort of “ultimate Truth”.  In contrast, even though religious believers will often make statements of humility towards the vastness of their God, they act as if they have a “lock” on absolute Truth.

So, if practical philosophy isn’t a religion, could it be a form of “spirituality”?  

It might be, but it depends on how you define the term.  As commonly used, “spirituality” refers to the individual, interior experience.  Often it is associated with strongly emotional experiences that can be called “mystical”, but at the very least are deeply meaningful to the individual.  This puts the realm of the spiritual at odds with the religious, in that as I explained above, the religious realm tends to deal with creeds and institutions.  I am willing to admit that the inductive and deductive reasoning that practical philosophy follows is ultimately grounded in the intuitions of individual people.  As such, both have some similarity to other experiences of human beings that are meaning-filled.

This might seem like a strange statement to people who assume that logic has some sort of priority over other intuitions in the realm of human experience.  But it simply is the case that the validity of statements such as “A cannot equal not A”, or “Socrates is a man, all men are mammals, therefore Socrates is a mammal” ultimately comes down to an intuition that a great many other people also share.#  And it is also the case that some people simply seem to be oblivious to logic.  For example, I have met people who argue that the Bible is totally without error and literally true.  When asked how they came to that opinion, they will argue that it says so in the Bible.  When I point out that this is circular reasoning, they do not seem to be able to understand the point I am making.#

Where what I am calling practical philosophy diverges from spirituality is that ultimately it is a collective process.   People who make decisions about the world not only think their ideas through using the process of inductive and deductive reasoning, they also express these ideas to others and enter into a dialogue about both their truthfulness and their meaning.  Authority figures in religious institutions also express their ideas to others, but they do not enter into a dialogue.  Instead, they use force to impose their viewpoint on others.  People who are following a spiritual path may not have the option of imposing their views on others, but they are not entering into a dialogue with others either.

A dialogue is a very specific sort of relationship between people.  It is based on a willingness by two people to entire into a conversation where each is willing to discard their previous beliefs if the other person can come up with a better argument.   The attitude that is brought to bear in a true dialogue makes it very different from some other things that may bear superficial similarity----such as political debates or court trials.   In these cases the parties involve may use inductive and deductive logic, but these are just two elements of a much larger arsenal of rhetoric that are designed to sway audiences to support their position.  People debating outside the “community of the dialogue”, routinely try to confuse people with complex and misleading arguments, appeal to their prejudice and feel that they have no responsibility to admit an error in reasoning when it is pointed out to them.    No political debate ends with one candidate saying about the other “He’s made the better argument and shown me the flaws in my thinking----vote for him instead of me.”   It is, however, sometimes the case that a dialogue does end with the following sort of statements by one side “You’ve got me there.   You are right.”  or “I hadn’t thought about that point.  It does make my side of the issue seem wrong, doesn’t it?”

The dividing line over whether or not someone is willing to admit error and move on has tremendous social implications.  It allows practical philosophy to be accumulative. That is to say, as human society moves through history, people are able to slowly accumulate more and more knowledge about the world around us, and build up on the work of previous generations.  This is most obvious in the realm of science and technology where experimentation can disprove a given hypothesis.  But even in the realm of something more nebulous, like philosophy, it is also true.  Almost all of the arguments that I have used in this essay originated in the minds of other people, which I have found out by reading the books that have been written on various subjects.  Because each and everyone of these arguments has been subjected to a rigorous debate whether or not they “make sense”, there has been a collective “sifting out” of the ones that are found to be false, and, a “polishing up” of others so that we end up with the very best explanations.

This essay is standing on the shoulders of giants.  And that is the big difference between practical philosophy and spirituality.  Because philosophy allows itself to enter into the community of the dialogue, and submit to rigorous appraisal based on both inductive and deductive reasoning, it offers the hope of slowly adding to the sum total of humanity’s wisdom.

In contrast, when I talk to a great many people who hold “spiritual beliefs”, I find instead a tremendous unwillingness to submit their “insights” to any sort of rigorous analysis.  They either get angry that anyone would question them, or, they simply assume an air of moral superiority and refuse to communicate at all.  Often an assertion is made that it is just “too ineffable to describe”.  But the person who makes these sorts of statements almost invariably use these experiences to make further claims that certainly do require some public discussion, such as, for example, that God exists.

Oddly enough, several philosophers have expressed that they too have had various uncanny, perhaps “mystical” experiences (for example, Socrates’ “Daemon voice” and Descartes “three dreams”.)#   But the difference between the philosophical point of view and the spiritual is that the philosopher doesn’t simply assume that nothing relevant can be said about the experience, but instead tries to figure out exactly what the experience meant.  In effect, I am asserting the when a spiritual person says that they are having an “ineffable” mystical experience, they simply aren’t trying very hard to explain exactly what the experience was like or to understand what it signifies.

I would also suggest that there is a very strong reason why many people would want to refrain from carefully exploring their spiritual experiences, one that bears close resemblance to institutional religions development of creeds.  If someone has an experience that is “ineffable”, it means that the person who has had it has attained some level of spiritual authority gives them a greater status than someone else who has not had it.  It stops people flat in their tracks when you can say “Well, if you’d had the experience yourself, you’d know I am right.”  An appeal to a special type of authority, one that by definition cannot be scrutinized for authenticity or relevance is one of the easiest ways to opt out of the “community of the dialogue”.

Fatalism, Liezi and Politics

I've been thinking a lot about "fatalism" lately.   Primarily, this is because my significant other got me thinking about determinism---as revealed in my previous post.  But in the process of writing that previous post, I started rereading a part of the Liezi, namely Chapter 6, which A. C. Graham titles "Endeavour and Destiny".  This in turn, has become something of a literary "brain worm" that I cannot get out of my head.

I think that this is because I am deeply consumed by the "Fate of the Earth", and how human society seems incapable of dealing with substantive problems that arise from it.  Here in Canada the Conservative government in Ottawa has tabled an omnibus budget bill that pretty much seeks to pass years worth of changes all in one fell swoop.  This is a totally unprecedented action and an insane abuse of our Parliamentary tradition.  It really is the case that the Prime Minister has so concentrated power over his caucus that he has reduced them to trained seals who bark at his command.

Things seem hardly better in the USA.  There big money has taken over the political process to the point where all sorts of special interests have gained a veto over legislation, appointments and other elements of good governance.  The result isn't some sort of conspiratorial government, however.  That's because all they have gained is a veto----they actually cannot put forward any agenda themselves either.  The result is paralysis.

Much the same sort of thing seems to be happening in Europe.  It is obvious to all and sundry that the EU has to develop some sort of supra-national regulation framework in order to deal with the present monetary crisis.  Yet the various parties seem in capable of "pulling together" to get the job done.

As an outsider who wishes for better and who has devoted a great deal of energy into politics, it seems that there literally isn't anything that anyone can do to make the world a better place.  Instead, it appears that we are suffering from a specific type of "fate"  and any power we have to change the world is simply an illusion.

This is a pretty startling thing for a modern person to espouse.  Yet, if you read ancient wisdom literature, the idea of a "fate" predetermined by forces outside of our control is pretty common.

"Death and life depend on destiny, riches and poverty depend on the times."  He who resents being cut off in his prime does not know destiny.  He who resents poverty and distress does not know the times.  To meet death unafraid, to live in distress without caring, is to know destiny and accept what time brings. (Liezi, A.C. Graham, p-132, Columbia Morningside Edition, 1990)   

It's always seemed to me that this attitude is incompatible with living in a modern, industrial democracy.  After all, if we are going to pursue science, democracy and the extension of human rights, people need to have some sort of belief in their ability to "do something" based on their personal effort.

This is the idea that since we are governed by fate anyway, why bother?  For example, if you are sick you know that you are either going to get better or not,  what is the point of asking for a doctor?   Actually, this particular example exists in the Liezi.  The argument seems fallacious to modern readers, but up until the middle of the 19th century you probably were better off not seeing a doctor, because their treatments usually caused more harm than good.

Even if modern medicine had not improved greatly since Liezi's time, the argument would still not really be terribly hard on fatalism.  It can be argued that just as someone is "fated" to either get well or not, in the same way, you could be argued that people are fated to either be left alone or have a doctor inflicted upon them.  I recall, for example, that Mother Teresa begged her nuns to let her die in peace without heroic medical intervention, yet they refused to listen and ordered the doctors to do their worst best for her final hours of life.

Indeed, the greatest fear of fatalism for modern people is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. People don't try because they think the results are set from the beginning, and not trying ensures that one set of negative results will result.  To this extent, fatalism is a pernicious evil.  But that, I think is not the point that Liezi is trying to make.

Previous to the quote I cited above, he contrasts a bunch of characters whom he names as "Artful", "Hothead", "Sleepy", "Wide Awake", "Tricky", "Simple", "Tactless", "Fawning", "Underhand", "Frank", "Tongue-tied", "Browbeat", "Cheeky", "Stolid", "Daring" and "Timid".   Note that most of these names refer to types of behaviour.  These are not people who chose to do nothing because fate had decreed all outcomes.  The point is that they acted in harmony with their inner nature, which is why Liezi says of all of them:  "These various attitudes are outwardly very different, yet all these men travelled on the Way in the direction destined for them." (p.131)

The point isn't what these people did, it's the attitude that they brought to their actions.  They were willing to accept that no matter how hard they try to do things, ultimately their fate is decided by forces outside of their control.  This attitude allows people to avoid two very significant pitfalls of politics.

The first of these is the idea that we have to be oh-so-clever in our calculations when it comes to things like voting.   I used to see this all the time when I was running for political office.  People would come to me and say "Oh I love your platform and agree 100% with everything you say.  But I simply cannot vote for you because you have no chance of winning and it would just be a 'wasted' vote."   ("The Simpsons" lampooned this in "Citizen Kang" in "TreeHouse of Horror:  VII".  When Homer reveals that Bob Doe and Bill Clinton have been replaced by aliens, most people refuse to vote for a third party candidate because that would be a "wasted vote".)  The problem is, of course, that if you always vote for the "lessor of two evils", you always end up voting for an "evil".  It also means that whatever party you vote for usually ends up ignoring you when in office because you have "nowhere else to go".

If voters simply "follow their heart" and vote for what they think is the best candidate no matter what, they stop having to do this sort of thing.  It not only makes people feel better, I believe it ultimately frees up the political system from the various perversions that come from thinking of votes as being "wasted".  This is something like Gandhi's ideal of "living the world you want to see".

The second problem with this sort of thinking refers to the way people in politics live their lives.  A lot of people involved "in the process" tie themselves up in knots trying to be all things to all people and by trying to give 120% of their energy.  This is based on the idea that when things go "wrong" it is always their "fault".   The fact of the matter, though, is that in politics the effort you make only rarely has all that much effect.  Sometimes people get elected in landslides who had no hope at all of being elected.  Other times people who have every reason to believe that they would be returned to office easily get trounced.  The problem is that it rarely is "up to you".

In both cases, a simple awareness of how important fate is to the project you are pursuing will take a great deal of the personal pressure that people impose upon themselves.  A similar attitude can help throughout most of life.  That job you always wanted may simply not be there for you no matter how hard you try.  No matter how much you work at helping your child succeed, he might just end up being a lump with no discernible ambition.  If the time isn't right, no amount of work can make a business succeed.

Accept your fate and live a happier life.  Not bad advice, if you ask me

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.