John G. Messerly's Blog, page 90

How To Live With Doubt About Life’s Meaning

I received a correspondence from a reader who wonders about “the triumph of judgment over spontaneity as we emerge from childhood into adulthood and the consequent obstacle it poses for living in psychic comfort.” In other words she worries about how to reconcile “a naturally felt purposefulness and zest for life against an intellectual sense of life’s essential pointlessness and its indifference to human concerns that give rise to the recognition of absurdity.” The only consolation she experiences is with her grandchildren “as they go about engaging the world with perfect unmediated wonder, boundless energy, and demands for attention.”

I too have felt this tension. When I watch the delight my young granddaughter takes in looking at every flower and insect, when I sense the innocent eyes through which she sees the world, I am saddened beyond words. Like any adult I know the ugliness of the world that waits to trample on that innocence. I clearly see the contrast between the will to live and pessimistic conclusions about the nature of reality that careful reasoners often draw. How then do we carry on without accepting some silly supernaturalism?

There are a number of strategies we might adopt here. We might follow Victor Frankl and conclude that the problem of life is not learning to live with its absurdity—since we can’t know for sure that it is absurd—but to learn to live not being sure if life is meaningful or not. Or we might follow a philosopher like E.D. Klemke who held that we can find subjective meaning in an objectively meaningless world by responding positively to its beauty. As Klemke put it: “if I can so respond and can thereby transform an external and fatal event into a moment of conscious insight and significance, then I shall go down without hope or appeal yet passionately triumphant and with joy.”

Still I agree with my reader that ultimately no amount of intellectual reflection ever fully dispels our deepest existential concerns. For the movement of time spoils even those things that make us happy and which, for the moment, give our lives purpose. This passage of time haunts us; that perpetual perishing which diminishes our joy by its intrusion into the present. This radical impermanence, and our consciousness of it, reminds us that our own demise rushes toward us as the present recedes away. The awareness of our impending doom is a constant companion capable of poisoning our momentary happiness, leading in turn to the inevitable realization that it not just we who may die, but our children, and their children, and all children, and everything else.

Reaching the limits of the intellect’s power to dissuade our existential fears, perhaps we can be comforted by an exuberant affirmation of the meaning found in life’s activities. This insight is profound. Any serious student of philosophy is struck by the stark contrast between the somber tone of our philosophical musings, and the joy we feel through our immersion in the world of the senses. In the mountains and oceans we see, in the walks we take and the meals we eat, in the joy we find in physical play and philosophical talk, and in the warmth we feel when surrounded by those that love us and whom we love, there we don’t so much find meaning as transcend the need for it. At those times life is sufficient unto itself. When we laugh and play and love, all the misery of the world momentarily vanishes. We hardly give meaning a thought. And if thought brings existential anguish back again—perhaps we can and should think less. In short, we live deeper than we can think.



But is living with less thinking a realistic antidote? Can we live this way after reflectivity has become interwoven into our natures? Can we live constantly in motion, so that troubling thoughts do not disturb? No, we cannot suppress our most important questions indefinitely. For after laughing and playing and loving, thought returns. Why is happiness so fleeting? Why must we suffer and die? What if all is for naught? We cannot avoid our questions for long; eventually we drop our guard and they return.

But even if we could avoid our deepest questions, should we? I don’t think so. Our questions bring forth the deep reservoir of our inner life that is often hidden from normal viewing. Moreover, our curiosity and inquisitiveness ennoble us, differentiating us from less conscious beings. Our thinking may not make us happy, but it gives us a deep interior life. However much we love the world of body and sense, thought is our salient feature. We should not repress it. And, since we cannot and should not evade our questions, the prescription to find meaning in activity only partially satisfies. No matter what we think or do, our questions remain.

Nothing then completely silences all our doubts and soothes all our worries—not the limited meaning life offers us, not the knowledge of our purpose, not the promise of hope, not the engagement in activity. How then do we proceed? We must accept something of our present life lest resentment cause us to curse it. Yet, at the same time, we must reject the present or nothing will improve. This creative tension admits the limitations of reality as a starting point while rebelling against its shortcomings. It involves working to mold, create, and increase meaning. We don’t know that reality will progress, but if we partially accept our present reality, if we dream of a future without limits and struggle to bring it about, we may increase meaning in the world.

Yet for now we are forced to live with uncertainty and angst, as a testimony to our intellectual honesty and emotional integrity. Unlike those who adopt blind faith or accept easy answers, we scorn the facile resolutions of the cowardly. And if we must die, we will die as free people who did not yield to the forces that sought to destroy them from the moment of their birth. Those are the forces we seek to defeat, but which have not yet been defeated. In the meantime, we should relish the limited joy and meaning life offers, work to eliminate human limitations, and suppress negative thoughts as best we can. This is no solution, only a way to live.

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Klemke, “Living Without Appeal: An Affirmative Philosophy of Life,” 194

 

Mike And The Mechanics: “The Living Years” – Philosophical Reflections

I recently stumbled upon a song that I’d forgotten about, “The Living Years” by Mike and the Mechanics. The group formed in 1985 as a side project of Mike Rutherford, one of the founding members of the band Genesis. The song was written by Rutherford and B. A. Robertson after both of their fathers died, and shortly before Robertson’s son was born. (Rutherford wrote about his father in this article in the Guardian.) According to Wikipedia, “The song was a chart hit around the world, topping the US Billboard Hot 100 on 25 March 1989,[2] and reaching No.1 in Canada and Australia and No.2 in the UK. It spent four weeks at No. 1 on the US Adult Contemporary chart. The music video and lyrics are below, followed by a brief commentary.

MIKE AND THE MECHANICS

“The Living Years”

Every generation

Blames the one before

And all of their frustrations

Come beating on your door

I know that I’m a prisoner

To all my Father held so dear

I know that I’m a hostage

To all his hopes and fears

I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Crumpled bits of paper

Filled with imperfect thought

Stilted conversations

I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got

You say you just don’t see it

He says its perfect sense

You just can’t get agreement

In this present tense

We all talk a different language

Talking in defence

Say it loud, say it clear

You can listen as well as you hear

It’s too late when we die

To admit we don’t see eye to eye

So we open up a quarrel

Between the present and the past

We only sacrifice the future

It’s the bitterness that lasts

So Don’t yield to the fortunes

You sometimes see as fate

It may have a new perspective

On a different day

And if you don’t give up, and don’t give in

You may just be OK.

Say it loud, say it clear

You can listen as well as you hear

It’s too late when we die

To admit we don’t see eye to eye

I wasn’t there that morning

When my Father passed away

I didn’t get to tell him

All the things I had to say

I think I caught his spirit

Later that same year

I’m sure I heard his echo

In my baby’s new-born tears

I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Say it loud, say it clear

You can listen as well as you hear

It’s too late when we die

To admit we don’t see eye to eye

Reflections – We do tend to blame those who went before us, especially our parents, for many of our problems. But children are quite similar to their parents. This realization should bring about understanding—our parents probably did the best they could, and we should appreciate that. Of course members of the older generations often assume that the new generation is “going all to hell.” The understanding needs to go both ways.

Clearly the composers of the song feel regret for not having said more to their fathers and for the misunderstandings and anger. This is the problem with bitterness—as many sages from Buddha to the present have noted—it really hurts those who are bitter. When we cease expecting perfection from our parents and our children, we will find more inner peace.

Forgiving those who hurt us doesn’t mean we approve of their actions. It means we are letting go of the past and journeying into a better future. It also means that though we were hurt and didn’t deserve it, we also hurt others even if unknowingly. It is part of human interaction to hurt and be hurt despite the best intentions. But we would live better if we could all forgive and not have lifelong anger and the regrets that follow from it. We would all do better to be less judgmental, especially if we have not walked in the other’s shoes.

What a beautiful song.

Bertrand Russell on Fearing Thought

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. ~ Bertrand Russell

A while back I dedicated a post to this quote and titled it “We Fear Thought.” Recently I received a thoughtful comment regarding that post. The essence of the comment is this:

While common anxieties like fear of the unknown or fear of failure may play some role, I think the more likely explanation is more mundane: the vast majority of individuals lack the means, motive and/or opportunity to think critically … Each individual has a unique combination of genes, nutrition, family influences, educational opportunities and the chance encounters with the environment that all influence the ability and desire for critical thinking. But even with the highest ability and motivation, an individual might have a stifling daily life that limits the opportunity for thought.

If this is correct it leads the commenter to conclude that:

Rather than focusing on “fear” as preventing critical thinking, which is an implicit judgement on an individual’s strength of character, we need to focus on providing the environment that can enhance the ability, motivation and opportunity for an individual to critically think about today’s issues, with motivation being the most difficult to address. We need to strengthen education and foster reflective public discourse …

I agree with the commentator that critical thinking demands: 1) ability; 2) motivation; and 3) opportunity. I also agree that we should provide environments that make critical thinking possible. And I think Russell would agree with all of this too.

But for those who do possess the ability and opportunity to think critically—which is most of us in the first world—why do so many think so poorly? Why do they believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and not in biological evolution? Why do the believe President Obama was born in Kenya or that climate change isn’t real? Why do they fear immigration rather than their fellow citizens? Clearly some reject critical thinking because it’s difficult. It is just easier to accept what the blowhards say on the radio, tv,  the internet or in church than to think carefully about whether what they’re saying makes sense.

Are all the scientists who have devoted their lifetime to the study of biology or climate science really involved in a conspiracy? If Obama really wasn’t born in the US, don’t you think someone would have found that out by now? Aren’t stories of virgin births more likely to be myths than historical facts? After all, virgin births are common in pagan mythology and nobody take those stories seriously. Don’t they realize that their chances of being killed by their fellow citizens far outweigh their chances of being killed by foreigner? Clearly it is just easier for people to believe what they are told than to assess whether what they are being told is reasonable.

But another reason that people don’t think is the reason that Russell notes—they fear that thinking might disrupt their worldview. As Camus put it, “beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.” I have had many university students through the decades who saw that thinking might undermine their cherished beliefs, and in response they retreated. They did fear their worldview might come crumbling down, and with it perhaps their relationships with those who shared those worldviews. Thinking is feared because it might destroy so much of what you are. We shouldn’t be critical of those who fear thinking about new things, and perhaps they are better off never questioning their long-held beliefs. But that doesn’t change the fact that they recoil in large part because they are afraid.

Bertrand Russell and Fearing Thought

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. ~ Bertrand Russell

A while back I dedicated a post to this quote and titled it “We Fear Thought.” Recently I received a thoughtful comment regarding that post. The essence of the comment is this:

While common anxieties like fear of the unknown or fear of failure may play some role, I think the more likely explanation is more mundane: the vast majority of individuals lack the means, motive and/or opportunity to think critically … Each individual has a unique combination of genes, nutrition, family influences, educational opportunities and the chance encounters with the environment that all influence the ability and desire for critical thinking. But even with the highest ability and motivation, an individual might have a stifling daily life that limits the opportunity for thought.

If this is correct it leads the commenter to conclude that:

Rather than focusing on “fear” as preventing critical thinking, which is an implicit judgement on an individual’s strength of character, we need to focus on providing the environment that can enhance the ability, motivation and opportunity for an individual to critically think about today’s issues, with motivation being the most difficult to address. We need to strengthen education and foster reflective public discourse …

I agree with the commentator that critical thinking demands: 1) ability; 2) motivation; and 3) opportunity. I also agree that we should provide environments that make critical thinking possible. And I think Russell would agree with all of this too.

But for those who do possess the ability and opportunity to think critically—which is most of us in the first world—why do so many think so poorly? Why do they believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and not in biological evolution? Why do the believe President Obama was born in Kenya or that climate change isn’t real? Clearly some reject critical thinking because it’s difficult. It is just easier to accept what the blowhards say on the radio, tv, internet or in church than to think carefully about whether what they’re saying makes sense. Are all the scientists who have devoted their lifetime to the study of biology or climate science really all involved in a conspiracy? If Obama really wasn’t born in the US, don’t you think someone would have found that out by now? Aren’t stories of virgin births more likely to be myths than historical facts? After all, virgin births are common in pagan mythology and nobody take those stories seriously. Clearly it is just easier for people to believe what they are told than to assess whether what they are being told is reasonable.

But another reason that people don’t think is the reason that Russell notes—they fear that thinking might disrupt their worldview. As Camus put it, “beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.” I have had many university students through the decades who saw that thinking might undermine their cherished beliefs and in response they retreated. They did fear their worldview might come crumbling down, and with it perhaps their relationships with those who shared those worldviews. Thinking is something to be feared because it might destroy so much of what you are. We shouldn’t be critical of those who fear thinking about new things, and perhaps they are better off never questioning their long-held beliefs. But that doesn’t change the fact that the recoil in large part because they are afraid.

Feeding Your Family is the Meaning of Life

In response to two recent post, “The Monotony of Work” and “Summary of David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech,” I received a perceptive comment from a reader. The commentor (C) is a well-paid software engineer who doesn’t look forward to thirty years of the same work. While thankful for gainful employment and recognizing the role that such works plays in sustaining civilization, what bothers him most is that his intellect is on loan to his employer, rather than being used in a search for truth and wisdom. And if he had a job that afforded this opportunity, he would be willing to make less money. (A better alternative would be to have a guaranteed minimum income to allow people to do what they enjoy.)

I was touched by the sorrow C feels in not being able to spend one’s life reading and learning precisely what one is most interested in and considers most important. I too felt that sorrow long ago and was fortunate enough to be able to pursue, and get modestly paid, for doing philosophy. I also relate to the pain he feels in knowing that he will never be able to know and be all that he want to be—a pain that all seekers of truth feel deeply.

C, who is about to become a father, believes that working to support his child will give more meaning to his work. He thinks that working for his child will be more moral and holy than pursuing “amor intellectualis Dei” (the intellectual love of God), for the latter is, after all, a selfish or hedonistic pursuit. Moreover, C had parents who sacrificed so that he was fed and educated. Thus he feels an obligation to do likewise for his own child. Perhaps then his own child to be able to both seek wisdom and be gainfully employed. As for C himself this probably isn’t possible, as his career demands too much of his psychic energy.

This last question particularly interests me. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard famously agonized over whether family life or being a philosopher was his better choice. Family life would impinge on the pursuit of truth and vice versa. Kierkegaard would choose philosophy over his love Regine Olsen, but he forever regretted his choice. Many of us face similar choices. I’ve had many students ask me whether they should major in something they loved with few job prospects like philosophy, or whether they should pursue something more financially rewarding but less interesting to them like accounting.

There are no easy answers to such questions. (I have addressed this topic in depth in “Should You Do What You Love?) What I can say is that even if one is lucky enough to pursue and be paid to do what you love—in my case to write, read, teach, and think about philosophy—one will find that there are unpleasant aspects to the job. You have to deal with uninterested or hostile students, dogmatic colleagues, disagreeable deans, unhelpful staff, boring meetings and more. This recognition might lead us to be more accepting of less than perfect jobs.

However C is correct that marriage, family and other outside interests do give us less time to pursue wisdom. Surely without a family and the demands of teaching so many college classes,  nearly 250 in my career, I would have been a more productive philosopher. But would I have been a better one? Would I have gained more wisdom? I doubt it. There is a reason that Buddhist monks considers tasks like washing dishes, planting food, and other mundane tasks as opportunities for Enlightenment. We often find the deepest insights in the most simple things.

All of this reminds me of the words of one of my intellectual heroes, the historian, philosopher, and wisdom lover Will Durant. He says that we cannot definitely answer questions about the meaning of life or how we should live our lives—our minds are too small to entirely comprehend these things. Nonetheless, Durant believes we can say that:

The simplest meaning of life then is joy—the exhilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being; sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is because it has more body and less soul, and understands that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no further meaning to its arms and legs than their abounding use … Even if life had no meaning except for its moments of beauty … that would be enough; this plodding thru the rain, or fighting the wind, or tramping the snow under sun, or watching the twilight turn into night, is reason a-plenty for loving life.

We should be particularly thankful for our fellows; they are a primary reason for loving life.

Do not be so ungrateful about love … to the attachment of friends and mates who have gone hand in hand through much hell, some purgatory, and a little heaven, and have been soldered into unity by being burned together in the flame of life. I know such mates or comrades quarrel regularly, and get upon each other’s nerves; but there is ample recompense for that in the unconscious consciousness that someone is interested in you, depends upon you, exaggerates you, and is waiting to meet you at the station. Solitude is worse than war.

Love relates the individual to something more than itself, to some whole which gives it purpose.

I note that those who are cooperating parts of a whole do not despond; the despised “yokel” playing ball with his fellows in the lot is happier than these isolated thinkers, who stand aside from the game of life and degenerate through the separation … If we think of ourselves as part of a living … group, we shall find life a little fuller … For to give life a meaning one must have a purpose larger and more enduring than one’s self.

If … a thing has significance only through its relation as part to a larger whole, then, though we cannot give a metaphysical and universal meaning to all life in general, we can say of any life in the particular that its meaning lies in its relation to something larger than itself … ask the father of sons and daughters “What is the meaning of life?” and he will answer you very simply: “Feeding our family.”

Perhaps this is the best we can do to alleviate C’s worries. It may be a simple answer, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a profound one.

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Durant, On the meaning of life, 126-28.

Is America on the Verge of Civil War?

“Is America on the Verge of Civil War?

While the idea may sound absurd, it happened just a few generations ago. The industrial north and the slave-holding, agrarian south couldn’t agree on, among other things, the extension of slavery into new states, as both sides didn’t want the other to gain a congressional voting advantage. A series of compromises over many years maintained the delicate balance, but gradually the two sides became more partisan, the rhetoric more divisive, and civil discourse eventually disappeared. Soon violence would be used to adjudicate their disputes, with the south firing the first shot. Within four years 700,000 Americans were dead, thousands more injured, homeless, widowed or orphaned. If that proportion of Americans were killed today, about 8 million Americans would die. The south thought that slavery and the lifestyle it provided were worth dying and killing for … and die and kill they did.

The parallels between the period that led up to the civil War in America and the situation today are striking. Today the basic functions of government—confirming Supreme Court justices, filling other judicial vacancies, passing budgets, maintaining infrastructure, paying our bills—are stymied by disagreements over abortion, marriage, contraception, gun control, diplomacy, climate change, immigration, taxes, race relations and more. And these disagreements, like those preceding the American civil war, take on a regional flavor. Western and northern states are generally more liberal and progressive, midwestern and southern states typically more conservative and reactionary.

Ideally moral and political disagreements would be resolved through rational discourse. Members of the legislative and executive branches, informed by experts and the best evidence scientific available, would carefully and conscientiously consider the truth about issues. Subsequently, they would exchange ideas with their colleagues with the goal of following the most prudent course. Their aim would be to act in the national and international interest, not to the individual interest of a particular representative who wants to be re-elected, which is generally accomplished by appeasing an ignorant constituency or a monied special interest.

Of course this is not how it works. Most representatives aren’t interested in the national or international interest; rather they are self-interested. If opposition to gun control, immigration reform, environmental protection or the selection of new judges aides their re-election, they will oppose such actions no matter how collectively good such things might be. And if they don’t get their way, they will not compromise. Instead they will not approve judges or budgets, or threaten to shut down of government or default on the nation’s debt obligations in order to get their way. They will actually threaten to undermine the world economy because, for example, they or their constituency doesn’t want planned parenthood to distribute contraceptives or people to have greater access to health-care!

Representatives should know better. After all, given their place in the economic order it’s senseless to risk a world economic collapse over a few contraceptives or their fellow citizens not being denied health-care due to pre-existing conditions. But to be re-elected they must pretend to care about keeping contraceptives from sexually active teenagers or health-care from poor people since many of their votes come from people who hold medieval views about sex or hate poor people. It also makes no sense for the elite to undermine the judiciary, as the wealthy benefit most from the rule of law and social stability. But if not approving judges is what some special interest wants, then by all means reduce the efficiency of the courts in order to be re-elected.

In fact, why not demonize government altogether if that helps get you get re-elected? Tell your constituency you hate government, just don’t mention that includes the police, firefighters, the national guard, the military, the FBI, CIA, CDC or the very government that you are working for! And don’t mention that it hardly seems patriotic to say you love America but hate its government. That doesn’t even make sense! Instead tell people to trust private corporations for surely Monsanto and Exxon Mobil have your interests at heart more so than FDR did when he created social security or LBJ did when he created medicare and medicaid. (That is sarcasm.) Now I understand that the rich who fund campaigns don’t want to pay taxes or have their businesses regulated, but by demonizing government as a means to this end the rich weaken the foundation of their own wealth and power. They undermine government and the rule of law at our and their peril.

The combination of a corrupt political/economic system, demonization of government, rampant economic and social equality, and an uninformed or misinformed citizenry is a toxic brew. It is the root cause, for example, of the current Donald Trump phenomena in which the dissatisfied masses support a uniquely unqualified individual for the office of the American Presidency. Trump is obviously unqualified for the office of the presidency in every conceivable way—from his personality and moral character, to his psychological instability, to his ignorance of any knowledge or experience relevant to the job. Trump is a poster boy of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias in which the ignorant assume they know a lot about things of which they are ignorant. His supporters no doubt suffer from a similar malady.

And while the American Psychiatric Association prohibits its members from offering a psychiatric diagnosis of a public official without their having conducted an exam on that person, I’m not a member so I’ll take my shot. (Although I have studied abnormal psychology and philosophical issues in psychiatry at a relatively high level.) I’d say a cursory glance at Mr. Trump reveals that he suffers severely from a number of psychological maladies including: bi-polar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and quite probably borderline personality disorder. He also suffers psychologically from the lack of sleep he brags about. Among the big 5 personality traits he would be rated very high on neuroticism and low on emotional stability.

Putting such an unstable individual at the helm of the nuclear arsenal is just one unintended consequence (and a particularly scary one) of a broken political system, especially today’s broken, obstructionist Republican party. The Republican party, especially its Tea Party wing, is in fact today’s Confederate party,  a white, racist party most prominent in the American south. As the basic functions of democratic government are eroding, the ignorant look for a strongman to save them. Needless to say this does not bode well for the republic or for international peace and prosperity.

Another way of looking at the American situation reveals that the society is caught in a paradox that game theorists call an n-person prisoner’s dilemma. The essence of this paradox is that all of us would do better if we all cooperated—by having universal health-care, enacting weapons bans, acting on climate change, minimizing environmental pollution, reducing or eliminating nuclear arsenals, abandoning the use of antibiotics for livestock, fixing the infrastructure, etc.—but groups who profit producing weapons, refining oil, polluting the environment, selling health insurance or not paying taxes do better if they never cooperate, at least in the short-term. Thus we live in a state of political warfare rather than a more cooperative society like Norway, Denmark, Sweden or Switzerland.

The key to escaping this prisoner’s dilemma is to penalize those who don’t abide by the social contract, those who don’t cooperate with the rest of us. This works pretty well for petty criminals who steal $100 from the quick shop, but it doesn’t work well at all for forcing cooperative behavior from bankers, financiers, CEOs and the corrupt politicians who do their bidding. When billions of dollars are stolen or billions of dollars of taxes go unpaid, there are no repercussions. No one is guarding the guardians, and you AR-15 won’t save you! When weapons manufactures, oil companies, or the meat or insurance industries oppose measure that serve the common good, they win and the common good loses.

There is little hope that much can be done about all this, since justice would demand that the many prominent citizens, politicians, financiers and others would then serve jail time, and a majority of those in prison would be released and given a basic income as recompense for the injustice they have probably been subject to since birth. The little thieves go jail, while the big thieves get bonuses. The wealthy and powerful want to undermine government’s ability to regulate, that’s why they rail against regulation. What they really don’t want is for government, the collective power of the people, to regulate their wealth and power. They want to be able to pollute the environment, or profit from selling assault rifles or by denying people health care without interference.

So what can be done? Perhaps the US government can become less corrupt like those of the Scandinavian countries but I wouldn’t bet on it. A more radical solution, but one I have suggested many times on this blog, is for future technologies to rewire our brains so that humans will become more cooperative and intelligent. In addition we would also need the moral courage to utilize such technology. This is, I believe, our best hope.

But I’d actually bet that humans will destroy themselves, except that if I won that bet I wouldn’t be around to collect. So instead I’ll keep hoping that our descendants will find ways to augment their current moral and intellectual. Either we evolve or we will die.

Christopher Hitchens DID NOT Convert on His Deathbed!

Christopher Hitchens

I just read David Frum’s recent piece in the Atlantic, “Betraying The Faith of Christopher Hitchens.” Frum is a well-known conservative political commentator and former speechwriter of American President George W. Bush. His piece is a scathing review of the Christian apologist Larry Taunton’s new book: The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist[image error].

Frum’s takedown of Taunton is so devastating that I will let it speak for itself. Basically Taunton claims that Hitchens was near a conversion to Christianity at the end of his life. He bases this astonishing claim on his interpretation of a few conversations he had with Hitchens. Not only is this evidence anecdotal, but it contradicts Hitchens’ very public and forceful claims made during the last days of his life. Hitchens could not have been more direct in rejecting the idea of a deathbed conversion.

Hitchens’ set out his views of religion in his masterpiece:  God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything[image error]. The idea that Hitchens would reject his lifelong views at the end of his life is preposterous.

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Of course the stories of deathbed conversions of atheists and agnostics told by the religious are legendary. Thomas Paine, the American revolutionary and author of the pamphlet “Common Sense,” was said to have had such a conversion. End of life conversions stories have also been told about the philosopher David Hume and more recently about the contemporary philosopher Antony Flew. The most famous deathbed conversion story is about Charles Darwin, but even the religious site Answers in Genesis acknowledges that this story isn’t true.

All of these stories elaborate on the aphorism “there are no atheists in foxholes.” The idea is that in times of extreme stress or when facing death people are more likely to believe in, or hope for, divine help. But there are a number of problems with the aphorism. First it isn’t clear that the aphorism is true. Second, even if it were true that people start believing in gods when under duress, that says nothing whatsoever about whether those beliefs are true. What the aphorism really reveals is that the source of much religion is fear. And that doesn’t reflect well on religion, although it has made it a very profitable endeavor.

The reasons that the religious are motivated to believe in deathbed conversions are obvious. Some don’t accept that others are really atheists;  others find atheism threatening because it shows believers that they might be wrong; and others hate that they can’t control those who disagree with them. But whatever the reasons, believers seem to find comfort telling themselves that atheists convert at the end of their life.

But this is all so lame. For even if Darwin or Hume or Hitchens did convert at the end of their lives—which they didn’t—what difference would that make? Are believers so insecure with their beliefs that they must be comforted by these false stories? Apollo or Zeus or Yahweh either exist or they do not. If believers in these gods are really sure of the certainty of their beliefs, why would they care that others convert? Clearly the real reason these false deathbed conversion stories resonate with believers is that they seemingly close the door for the believer on a terrifying idea–that most of what passes for cherished belief is just superstitious nonsense.

Summary of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

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Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is one of “the best-known and best-loved poems in the English.” For each stanza I provide [in brackets] a brief explanation if the meaning isn’t clear to a modern ear.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
         The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

         And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

[Someone has died; the cows are coming down the meadow; the farmer is coming home; and now the speaker has the world to himself.]

Now fades the glimm’ring landscape on the sight,
         And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

         And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

[The landscape is fading away; the air is quiet except for the buzz of insects and the bells around the necks of livestock.]

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r
         The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand’ring near her secret bow’r,

         Molest her ancient solitary reign.

[An owl is hooting, probably from a church tower, and disturbed by the presence of someone, probably the speaker.]

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
         Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
         The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

[The simple country folks are dead and lying in their graves in the churchyard.]

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
         The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
         No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

[Things that usually wake people from sleep will not wake the dead.]

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
         Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
         Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

[All the pleasures of life that the dead can no longer experience.]

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
         Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
         How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

[All the things these dead people did while they were alive.]

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
         Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
         The short and simple annals of the poor.

[We shouldn’t mock the simple lives that these dead peasants lived.]

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
         And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.
         The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

[Don’t make fun of the dead, for you will be dead one day too.]

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
         If Mem’ry o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro’ the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
         The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

[Don’t blame the dead if they don’t have fancy monuments for gravestones.]

Can storied urn or animated bust
         Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
         Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

[No fancy urn or bust will bring back anyone from the dead; no honors make death better.]

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
         Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
         Or wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.

[Maybe these dead had passions, ruled empires, or played music.]

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
         Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
         And froze the genial current of the soul.

[Knowledge is like a collection of pages that get filled as time goes on; but the dead never got to see the pages now being written; and their potential is frozen in death.]

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
         The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,
         And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

[Many gems and flowers are unseen; many heroic lives are never recognized.]

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
         The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

         Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.

[Some of the dead stood up to tyrants, were brilliant as Milton, or wretched as Cromwell.]

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
         The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

         And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib’d alone
         Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin’d;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
         And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
         To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

         With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

[(The above three stanzas run together.)The dead’s situation prevented them from receiving approval, and made it impossible for them to ignore threats,  Instead they died unknown because of their poverty. They also did’t have time to do what it takes to get remembered in history, or the time to commit crimes like killing kings or being merciless. And they have no time to use fancy language or be inspired by the Muses.]

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
         Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
         They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

[These dead lived far from the city, and didn’t make a lot of noise in their lives.]

Yet ev’n these bones from insult to protect,
         Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,

         Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

[Their memorials may not be fancy but they can still cause us to pause.]

Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d muse,
         The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
         That teach the rustic moralist to die.

[Their memorials were inscribed by the illiterate who are ironically muses teaching the simple folk to be prepared for their own deaths.]

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
         This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
         Nor cast one longing, ling’ring look behind?

[Who will give up life without looking back longingly at what they are leaving behind.]

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
         Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev’n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

         Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

[We die best with our loved ones at our side, and nature cries from the grave that our passions live on.]

For thee, who mindful of th’ unhonour’d Dead
         Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
         Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
         “Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
         To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

[(The above two stanzas run together.) The speaker is aware of the dead so he is remembering them in this poem. What would a villager say about the speaker after the speaker died? The villager would say he saw the speaker hurrying through the grass to watch the sun go down.]

“There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
         That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

         And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

[And the villager would say he saw the speaker sitting under a tree looking at a brook.]

“Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
         Mutt’ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
         Or craz’d with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

[And the villager would say he saw the speaker rambling in the woods.]

“One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,
         Along the heath and near his fav’rite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
         Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

[And the villager would say that he missed seeing the speaker in his usual places.]

“The next with dirges due in sad array
         Slow thro’ the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
         Grav’d on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.”

[And the villager says that saw that the speaker had died.]

THE EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
       A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,
       And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.

[This is Gray’s epitaph. It says he was a young person of humble birth, a scholar and a poet, who experienced depression.]

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
       Heav’n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear,
       He gain’d from Heav’n (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

[He was generous and sincere; he fought his depression; and heaven sent him a good friend.]

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
       Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
       The bosom of his Father and his God.

[Don’t concern yourself with his good and bad points for now he is resting, hopefully in eternal life with his god.]

 

Summary of David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech

I was recently reminded of David Foster Wallace‘s (1962 – 2008) well-known commencement speech: “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.” Below is a summary and commentary on the speech. Some of its main themes are: solipsism, loneliness, the monotony of life, the meaning of real education, and the importance of sympathy and conscious awareness. (At the bottom of the post is a video which contains multiple quotes from the speech and ties together its main idea. Below that is an audio of the complete speech.)

Wallace begins with a parable:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Wallace quickly explains that “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” Against this story’s backdrop, Wallace considers the value of the value of the liberal arts education. Wallace argues that the significance of a liberal arts education isn’t so much about learning how to think as it is that it provides”the choice of what to think about.”

To explain this idea he considers a theist and an atheist who are both convinced that they know the truth. For Wallace this shows that people construct meaning from the inside by interpreting reality differently.  Yet most of us are close-minded, unaware of how imprisoned we are to the ideas and events that continually shape us—to the water all around us. A real education teaches us: “To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.”

So a liberal arts education gives us tools to escape from our default settings, from the things we believe to be obvious, but which really aren’t. Education

… means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed …

If you’re truly educated you can “keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.” And to show why this is so important Wallace informs the new graduates:

The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what “day in day out” really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

To explain Wallace pictures of an average day in the near future for college graduates:

you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping … So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

This is the life that awaits the graduates. It will be their life “day after week after month after year.” But we can choose to be upset about the store or the traffic, or we can reject this natural default setting, which is to be frustrated with all of this. We can then see that all of this isn’t about us;  we can learn to see things differently. Perhaps those in traffic or at the store are as stressed as we are. Perhaps their lives are much worse than ours. It is hard to see the world like this, but we can do it with effort. As Wallace poetically puts it:

If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Wallace’s point is that “The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.” (This advice is reminiscent of the existentialists.) Worshipping money, power or physical beauty will not satisfy, for you will never have enough. These are the things the world encourages us to worship, what we worship by default. But

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

Wallace concludes then that this is:

… the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water.” “This is water.” It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now. I wish you way more than luck.

I thank Wallace for reminding me of of so much—that education is about choosing to escape our biological and cultural default settings; that we can only control our own minds, and not the external world; and that real education is a lifelong process that has little to do with knowledge. Finally, I thank all those friends and teachers who help provide me with a liberal arts education so long ago. It has not made me rich, but it has helped make me free.  Now here now are the videos I promised.

And here is the speech in full.

The Monotony of Work

I corresponded with an old friend yesterday who was communicating the tedium of his work as a software engineer. He is thankful that he earns a six-figure salary, and he understands that most people in the world would happily trade places with him, but that doesn’t change the fact that a future filled with a lifetime of coding doesn’t excite his probing and restless mind. Minds like his need stimulation, and they could contribute so much to the rest of us if they were freed to follow their interests . Moreover, while technology companies pay some of the best wages in the United States, they expect more than 40 hours of work in return, which leaves my friend with less time with his children than he would like.

It is just so hard to know how to balance the responsibility we have for taking care of our kids with our desire to elaborate or express ourselves through our labors—that is to have more meaningful work. Hopefully we can do both, but the fact is that most of us will have to do things we don’t like in order to survive. I wish it were different.

There is a lot to say about all this and I have written many posts about work on this blog. Rather than rewriting that material, I provide these links in the hope that they might provide my friend some comfort. I’d say that the post “Fulfilling Work,” best expresses my views on the topic.

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose: What We Really Want From Our Work

A Summary of Bertrand Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness”

Karl Marx for Dummies

Rethinking Work

Friendship is Another Reason to Work

Fulfilling Work

Should you “Do What You Love?”

The Problem of Work-family Conflict in the US

Overworked

Kant: Should We Develop Our Talents?

And I’ll have more on the topic in my next post.