Month: April 2010

If we posit that some sort of what I am terming moral technology is necessary for happiness, what are the essential elements? Is compassion? Is non-violence? Or is it sufficient that you accept your lot, no matter what it is, and move forward directly with pleasure in your work, and what companionship you have?

Famously, the Bhagavad Gita is presented to a soldier in the heat of a battle in which he is killing kinsmen. He is told that doing his duty is what is necessary, not feeling sympathy for those he is killing, who, after all, can’t be killed.

Let us further posit that the Hindus were wrong in their belief in the after-life (I would disagree with this position, but let’s extend this idea to its logical end): would the argument change? Would the reasons offered lose their validity? What is being offered is a means of living congruently IN THIS LIFE. Would it lose its actual value, that of fostering goal directed activity, and “meaning context”? I don’t think it would.

Comment:

Let me think out loud a bit. None of us are as happy as we can imagine. What keeps us from happiness? Is it pain? Is pain an absence of happiness, and happiness an absence of pain? I don’t think so.

We often remember with the most fondness times when objectively we are challenged–for example, sports competitions–or pleasant days following difficulty. You can’t say a pleasant day exists on its own. It is in a context, where normally it is embedded in hard work. You work hard, you enjoy your vacation. The thrill of victory only follows great strain.

The starting point for happiness, it seems to me, is a life that is neither too hard nor too easy. That is the material requirement.

The moral requirement is relative tranquility. This means freedom from abusive emotions like chronic anger and jealousy, which themselves begin with casting ourselves as a victim of something.

Ultimately, you are happy as an individual. You can’t be happy as a “society”, unless the members of that society are happy. This means that happiness is an internal state, local to each individual.

Given this, the starting place for happiness is in the individual too. An individual can work to make his life physically easier. He can also toughen himself, such that he needs less, and the same amount of difficulty creates less strain on him.

On the one path, of physical ease, there is no logical end point until he is doing nothing all day. This is the dream of some people, until they achieve it, and realize doing nothing is overrated. And the prospect of achieving it is an uncertain one. You may fail, since you are trying to control things external to you. And until you achieve it, you are not satisfied, since you have not met your own requirement of happiness, that of ease.

Obviously, there is always potentially a stopping point, where you say “this is good enough”. This is the point of contentment. Yet, since this is an internal state–one with no external requirement–why not shorten the period, and alter your opinion earlier? This is the logic of the the wandering beggar, in the other extreme, who tries to live happily with nothing.

Socialism, in the event, is not a system for building ease and wealth, but rather for pulling people down who have been successful. It is not intended so much to raise the low, but to lower the high. The only places something like Socialism works is when you have very high degrees of cultural homogeneity, and where people tend to be like one another anyway.

In our own country, it is always expressed in terms of resentment and anger and hatred. No one is dying of hunger or thirst. The pain they feel is the outcome of agitation, which is the intentional cultivation of a sense of grievance on the part of professional activists, who use their clients as a means to their own power.

One could look at agitators like Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama as professional extortionists, who can be employed to get money and concessions out of monied elites, where the “interest” or fee they charge is power. You put them in power, they give you stuff. All they want is the land underneath you. You keep the house.

Now, I am not opposed to charity. If people are weak and hungry, or sick, and suffering in other ways, it is the decent thing to do to help them. This is not Socialism. This is not what I am opposing. Nor am I fully opposed to using even the Federal Government in this service, although I think it much better Constitutionally to limit those projects to the sundry States.

What I am opposed to is the belief that wealth, per se, is a crime. When the Russian Communists murdered the kulaks, or when Mao held his show trials by “The People” where so many “bourgeois capitalists” were killed, this was the crime that was alleged, and we see it in muted form every time somebody says “soak the rich”. The top 10% of income earners pay some 71% of the taxes in this country, and the bottom 47% pay nothing. Economically, asking them to pay 100% is stupid. History is clear: when you punish achievement, you get much less achievement, and correspondingly less money.

The “soak the rich” people are just jealous. They want to punish the successful for being successful, and to steal everything they own. This was done literally in all Communist nations, and is the idea behind most of the policies we see today on the Left.

It is interesting that we are all most sensitive to the flaws in others we can readily recognize in ourselves. A person incapable of sin, would be incapable of grasping on a human level how most people think. All of us are in constant flux, and what order we contain relates to the decisions we make, which themselves are invariably based on principles. If you act on impulse, the principle is that that is acceptable. If you act based on greed, it is based on the idea that having things is far better than not having things, and that the pleasures to be had from having things outweigh the pains of avariciousness, such as the objectification of experiences and people.

As I have often argued, morality is simply a technology for optimal fulfillment in life, when it is understood properly. There is no need to reject in advance and in principle ANY human emotion: greed, hate, anger all have their places. To not feel them is to so curtail your possibility of emotional movement that you likewise curtail your innate capacity for fulfillment and joy. The grim sobriety of the stereotypical Puritan (who may in fact not have been so grim, but that’s another discussion) is not Goodness at all, in my view.

Where negative emotions become malignant is when they become permanent parts of your personality. If you are always angry, or always jealous, that is a manifest sign of a character flaw, something in you which holds on to things, and which in so doing lessens your ability to generate emotional satisfaction. This is the grasping–tanha, if I’m not mistaken–of the Buddhists.

In my own view, evil begins with self pity, and self pity cannot be understood except in a social context. Animals do not feel self pity. They feel pain, which something completely different.

It is for this reason that I view the moral basis of Socialism as evil. It is a doctrine of envy. It is a doctrine of resentment.

There was a time when large numbers of people were going hungry, and lived in cold, leaky homes, where they often died before their time of preventable illnesses. The claim made by Marx was that this would get worse and worse, until such time as they rebelled. The claim made by the followers of Adam Smith was that increasing quantities of wealth would be generated, such that over time all such suffering would be alleviated.

Self evidently, the Capitalist school of thought was right. Our poor live better than most kings did 200 years ago. They have heated homes, shelter from the elements, more than enough food, access to medical care (Medicaid goes back to the 60’s), and quite frequently cell phones, TV’s, and even cars.

Thus, the Socialists are not critiquing a system which is causing unnecessary suffering. They are invoking ENVY–the idea that we should be angry that results are not spread evenly–to criticize the system. Socialism is a solution, then, to an emotional dysfunction. It is rotten in its core claim to relevance.

It is not an economic doctrine. Marxism was an economic doctrine, and it was wrong. Marx failed to account for the unlimited human capacity for creativity. Every year, we do more with less. Garbage, nuclear waste, pollution: these are technical problems, not philosophical problems.

As I have said a number of times now, it was the MERCANTILISTS who invented the idea that wealth was limited, and that one man’s gain was NECESSARILY another man’s loss. This idea was WRONG. I don’t know how else to put it. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

Adam Smith, a radical liberal in his day, offered up the only theory proven to make EVERYONE richer. The only alternative is theft, and that is the solution of empire, and Socialism, which do diminish others in the process of enriching the few.

It’s strange to think about, but so much of the quality of our lives depends on how we approach our work. Do we do it with violence, or care? Are our days characterized by haste, followed by indolence, or by persistently taking that extra second or minute needed to actually interact fully with a task? When doing pullups–to take an example from my morning–you can just struggle through them, then move on; or you can feel them all the way through, and watch and feel yourself moving. You can even detach emotionally from struggle, and achieve aesthetic pleasure in ANYTHING.

When I deadlift I always relax completely before doing the movement. I don’t tighten up until the moment I apply pressure. And even though it IS a struggle, I don’t process it that way. My BODY is struggling. I’m just the one who gave the orders.

Surely living well is some combination of detaching from unpleasantness, and giving in fully to the pleasureable? And would not, then, work well done be full engagement with the task, focusing both on the abstraction of work well done, and the present reality of details which can be unfolded in infinite and pleasingly unexpected ways, in even the most mundane of chores?

These are, at least, Buddhist ideas. The more I grow as a person, the more I realize the Buddha did nothing more or less than state the obvious. That it wasn’t obvious to people then, or people now, is simply due to Mara, the demon of stupidity, who you can believe in, since he has got you too. Yes, you.

One other thing: William James made the point that no two perceptions can ever be precisely the same, since our brain is in constant flux, and collecting countless (i.e. we can’t count them, even now) impressions, so that the brain which sees someone or something one day, is not the same brain that saw them yesterday, or will see them tomorrow.

Why should we be humble? Let me continue to count the ways.

Our existence is our perception. Who we are, ultimately, is defined by how we choose to process the world: what we pay attention to, in particular. I don’t believe in “will”, per se. What there is is focus. You can be said to have “will”–and manifestly many people do–when you focus on one course of action, and are able to discard all other courses of action, as for example quitting.

I wonder, though, about everyday perception. When you are with your lover, is that different than when you are standing next to the coffeepot, talking about the last American Idol? If you an ambulance driver, is your experience picking up victims of fatal car crashes necessarily different than the experience of a clerk processing, say, accident claims?

If we posit that the brain is some sort of wondrous machine (it is, clearly: the open question is in how much more “Mind” may consist, if anything), then all emotions are open to you all the time. They are just neurochemical transactions.

On the level of pure awareness, can it not be that jaded ambulance drivers lose any qualitative reaction to dead bodies? Can it not be that some clerks find filing exciting? Why is that impossible, other than that most people resent it?

I’m listening to Enigma’s 1990 (if my Roman numeral translation is right) cd. Tape, actually. I’m always a bit behind the times. This RECORD–can I say that?–has long seemed to me to stand well for what I have termed Sybaritic Leftism, and even Cultural Sadeism. They start with monastic hymns, which are rendered quickly ironic by modernistic beats, and hedonistic (onanistic, as Bloom would likely view it) beats, which quickly explicitly acknowledge Sade, as the Godfather of the loss of self restraint. Then you get the end of the world, then a desire to return to belief.

Anyway, that is what got me thinking about qualitative gestalts/paradigms. They tried to create something DIFFERENT than what everyone else was making. Not just new lyrics, or rhthyms, but a blending of mythic themes, with modernism. Of the sacred, with confusion.

And I heard something like that on the radio yesterday, while traveling. They included the gongs of a church, an Islamic muezzin, and several other types of music from around the world, with what were actually very banal lyrics, repeated over and over. Something like “love is deeper than death; jealousy comes from the grave”. Not quite right, but close. It felt like poetry, but it wasn’t. It was a riff.

How do we return to the “rivers of belief”? These musicians seem to sense a loss, while they are speeding it along.

Life is interesting. I never get bored with the irony in which we bathe daily.

I should add I’ve answered that question often, so I’ll leave it be for now.

Where did this idea come from that a good life is one in which you spend 8-10 hours a day half-assing something, then the rest of your waking moments drinking and/or watching TV? It may be that few would consciously argue that is a good life, but people complain about work, and when they are done, they vegetate, all too often for 3-4 hours, in front of inane programming. This is, I think, reasonably typical.

I don’t get TV in any form. I have an antenna, but never bought the converter box. And I forget that I don’t have it. Sometimes when I am travelling and stuck in a hotel room I will watch it, and there is no doubt some programs are worth watching. I saw an excellent one on Buddhism a couple weeks ago.

But what is wrong with not only accepting but being happy in the idea that you can spend 8-10 hours doing good, useful work somewhere, then another 4-6 developing your body, mind and spirit? People used to work 12-16 hour days all the time. Were they less happy than us? Research seems to be clear that most people are actually happier at work than they are at home, even though the crappy ideas about work most of us have been fed frequently blind people to that fact.

Work is dignified. It is honorable. It is creative. Ultimately, the type and quality of work you do is illustrative of who you are choosing to become. It shows your character, or lack thereof.

I don’t doubt that when we die, some of our lazy days come to mind, but I don’t think you can ever fully appreciate a lazy day without earning it with a lot of hard days.

And as far as that goes, work need not be unpleasant. If you take an approach to it of walking steadily, rather than running in bursts, then pausing to catch your breath, you can cover many, many enjoyable miles.

It seems to me that intelligence is best defined by your capacity to efficiently obtain the results you desire. In school, of course, this is a high test score. In life, it varies widely.

If two people desire love, that person who seeks and maintains it best, is smartest. If you are building a shed, that person is smartest who does it best and quickest. If you want a beautiful painting, that person who produces the best one is smartest. If we are dealing with music, it is the person most capable of playing it well, writing it well, or even appreciating it, if that is the task.

Clearly, IQ matters. You can’t be a doctor with a low IQ. (although that may change, with smart people choosing to pursue other careers). At the same time, there are so many realms of human endeavor where factors along the lines of “emotional intelligence” make the difference that it is foolish for ANYONE to grant themselves the “ontological status” of smart.

In fact, I reject the term genius for anyone. Perhaps genius at times, or genius in a subject at their best, but no one is smart in everything all the time, and to the extent we believe this myth, we reject the scepticism which should attend what I term the “Cult of the Expert”.

I think it might be useful to differentiate these three terms. Marxism was an economic theory. I saw WAS, since Marx offered a scientifically formated prediction–a hypothesis–which was falsified by history. He was wrong.

Specifically, he predicted that wealth, being finite, would continue to concentrate in the hands of a few, impoverishing thereby the many, who of course could not be expected to put up with it forever. Revolution, according to this hypothesis, would NECESSARILY occur in the nations where this wide gap first emerged, namely the already industrialized nations.

Yet, in Russia, 85% of the population lived on farms. Only perhaps 10% of the population, on the high side, was even remotely in the “proletariat”. Everyone else fed themselves and their families–and feudal lords–with no interference from anyone. Lenin tricked them into supporting him by promising them land. Mao did the same thing, while contradicting Marxist ideas even more dramatically by STARTING in the countryside. He was helped greatly by leading an effective anti-Japanese guerilla war, and, again, by promising the peasants the sun, moon, and stars.

What needs, therefore, to be added to this mix is Lenin’s notion of the “professional” revolutionary. Marxist doctrine held that the revolution was inevitable, and could not be hastened or forced. Lenin taught that a small cadre of people dedicated to cynical deceptiveness, ruthlessness, and above all a PLAN, could take power, in the NAME–not the reality–of Marxism. Hence the frequent use of Marxist-Leninism, which is an oxymoron.

Leninism=Communism, which is a POLITICAL form, not an economic one. It is one which uses POWER backed by and often signified by intentional terror to cow the masses into silent compliance.

Socialism is a CULTURAL form. It is a moral claim that inequality is wrong, and that the MEANS of centralized power–there is a continuum here, but the intent remains the same–is how you fix it. It deduces from the Mercantilist fantasy that wealth is limited, that wealth concentrated is necessarily wealth stolen, from which it rationalizes the theft of property by the State. It provides the rhetorical cover for totalitarianism, which is why socialists are utterly unable to condemn the abuses of Cuba, China, and North Korea. As long as the only crime is inequality, then anything that addresses it is moral.

It seems to me important to distinguish these two terms. The first is a description of a CULTURAL phenomenon, and the second of an ECONOMIC system. Consumerism is effectively a doctrine of Physical Hedonism, in which happiness is the goal of life, and is to be found in the acquisition of external objects, where human beings, more or less, are to be understood as well as objects, with prices.

Me, I will never have a trophy bride, since I can’t foot the bill. Nor will my own self esteem climb as a result of driving to work in an expensive car, and driving home to a “castle” situated with other “persons of quality”. I refuse to put a value on myself, based on my material success. I’m not opposed to money–I would like a lot of it–but if I were rich, it would simply enable me to pursue more aggressively the projects I pursue now part-time, and some of which–like some experiments in biology I have in mind–that I simply can’t afford the parts and pieces for.

I went to see “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” yesterday. It was morally appalling, and I found myself in vague discomfort start to finish–with only a few laughs to punctuate it–but found myself pondering one of the characters, a 7th grade girl we first see reading Ginsberg’s Howl. She was the prototypical outsider. You see them in every school. They are of above average intelligence, and when they reach a certain age, they realize our world is in large measure mad. We have rejected the sacred demands of traditional culture, and worked feverishly to insulate ourselves from all material discomforts, and have in general seemingly chosen willful superficiality over the dignified struggles of yesteryear: in war; in fighting for your family; in sincere and deep religious devotion; in dedication to your community.

Those who notice this almost invariably gravitate to the counter-culture, and leftist politics. Why? Socialists claim they oppose the vapidity of Consumerism. And people like Ginsberg are qualitatively different. They seem deep. Suffering seems deep.

Yet, this is only partially true. Suffering in the pursuit of a difficult end, based on self chosen principles, creates depth. Pain, by itself, does nothing. It breaks you down into a nullity, then you do drugs, and lose your mind, as did the “best minds” of Ginsbergs generation.

Once you accept the basic notion of Quality–which I define as richly textured latent information–then you can accept the idea of movement towards or away from quality. To this, though, I would add that you can have qualitatively positive movement, and negative movement. Your personality, in my own terms, is an emergent property of the self organizing nature of human consciousness, oriented around principles you choose.

You can move towards Evil, which is to say, towards self pity, resentment, anger, hate, pleasure in causing others pain; and you can move towards Goodness, which is to say towards the rejection of self pity, persistence in the face of difficulty, and growing awareness of light and the possibility of joy, which leads to love, and a genuine desire to alleviate the pain of others, and to take pleasure in so doing.

Ginsburg moves you towards self pity, and the rejection of transcendance, and he is the rough direction most people go who want to reject Consumerism. This is unnecessary.

Capitalism is simply a method. Its means are defined by what people want. If people want local businesses, and genuinely rich diversity of options, they will get them. Capitalism will FOLLOW wherever the people lead. If you reject a life based on consumption, then Capitalism will adapt.

To claim that the homogenizing, maternalistic Nanny State will correct the maladjustments of suburbia is stupid. It is a fundamental misundertanding of what is being proposed.

I am a conservative Liberal. This is absolutely different from social conservatism. I want for all people the capacity for them to lead the lives they want to lead. I think the evidence is clear that most groups are happiest living with their own kind. Black people are happier living with other black people. They understand one another. They know what to expect. Mexicans are happiest living with other Mexicans. White Lutherans are happier with white Lutherans. Etc.

I see a future in which we accept gay cities–where everyone is gay. And Christian cities, where everyone walks to the same church. We have room for Muslim towns, with prayer towers, and a Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. They simply need to accept, in writing, word and deed, the primacy of our Constitution and laws. They cannot exact “cruel and unusual punishments”; they cannot ban “blasphemy”. If they want to priviledge Allah above our national government, they join in that most Christians. As long as they follow our laws, and do not encourage anyone to break them, this is acceptable to me.

This pattern can be continued. My own vision for a post-consumeristic future is one in which we decouple the currently overweaning Federal Government from the States to a great extent, and sort of atomize into countless groups, living in small communities, how they want to live. Drugs should be able to be legalized; and prostitution; and abortion should be able to be banned: all in some places, not others, depending on local tastes and mores.

What ties us together? Goodness, as I have defined it, and as someone smarter than me may redefine it in the future.

Currently, we suffer so much from loneliness and social isolation. This is the clear, empirically verifiable result of multiculturalism, which aims not to protect and reconcile difference, but to eradicate it outright, regardless of what the fools pushing this agenda claim.

None of this pain is necessary. None of it.