Find Compassion

There has been something sitting at the back of my mind, softly prodding all month as I speak to people, talk about things that are not important. So much of my life, whether I spend it blogging about things that may or may not reshape the world or even about little musings that make me feel a whole universe broad.

The truth is, I spend a great deal of my time angry, I spend a great deal of my time voicing outrage, speaking out to ridicule people with whom I don't agree. It doesn't bother me. In fact, I find a great deal of joy in voicing those opinions, but that's not what's been nagging me.

I hear people talk all of the time about unconditional love, as if it were the most elegant phenomenon they had ever come to understand. I don't agree with that assessment.

Do not look for love in everything, do not soften yourself to the world perpetually. Show it love when love is what it needs, but when there is something that you see as wrong, do not hesitate to wave a finger at it and shriek at the top of your lungs. Create satyr, voice distaste, and then, from time to time, find compassion.

Do not love unconditionally. There are plenty of things in the world worth hating. Hate poverty. Hate starvation. Hate disease. Ridicule irrationality and speak out against the people who propagate it.

At the end of all of that, find compassion for those who suffer as a result. Allow those emotions to be directed properly and to subside. I, from time to time, ridicule Creationists and people who believe in faith healing and all of these other things. Above all, though, I feel compassion for those people, because they suffer for their errors.

I feel compassion for homophobes who will never recognize the legitimacy and the elegance of those relationships. I feel compassion for the racists who will never understand genetics because they insist on differentiating between people.

Do not love unconditionally. Do not feel guilty about hate. Just find compassion.

In the Future

The more I have conversations with my friends about dead people, the great men and women of previous generations, the more I realize that we have a skewed view of ancestors, that we see them as iconic, and while there might be something to that, it creates a pretty unrealistic worldview.

I mean, the average high school graduate knows more about the way the world works than Aristotle. There are many great things that Aristotle said and did, but if he were alive today, talking about the theories presented in Politics, or in Physics or Metaphysics, he would be laughed out of a general education course.

No one accepts Aristotle's political morals anymore, and the modern ethicists (guys like Peter Singer) are so far beyond that it's incredible. Aristotle was a brilliant man, idolized by many, but why? Because he was at the peak of innovation, seems like the obvious reason, but that leads us to totally jump past his shortcomings.

Sitting in a seminar at Saint John's College, touring, I remember listening to students talk about Aristotle's Politics, the section on slavery. I was so sure I wanted to go to Saint John's that I was literally telling complete strangers where I was going to college next year (I had already been accepted, and was looking for a way to pay for it), but watching these students jump through hoops to make Aristotle seem like a modern ethicist was just ridiculous.

There were a lot of reasons why I decided not to go to Saint John's, or at least a lot of reasons I rationalized that decision, but this is one of the biggest.

Every classic has some value to it. Every great book has something to offer, whether fiction or nonfiction, ancient or modern. That doesn't mean it is a revelation from cover to cover. That doesn't make the author, or his philosophy, immaculate.

I like Dave Matthews' song "Where are You Going." I think it's a fantastic song with a great sound and beautiful imagery. Does that mean everything he's written is fantastic? No. I think most of his music is, but I acknowledge the songs that fall short, the couplets that don't quite work.

This isn't a stretch because we don't treat our musicians like messiahs, we don't treat them like prophets who's work is eternal, all transcending. This is how some people treat Aristotle. They love Ethics, and so they apologize for the failures of Politics. This is a mistake, and it's the same one that religious fundamentalists make.

Find the beauty in the context. Find the elegance in the time and place in which the theory was fabricated, but don't expect perfect, all consuming wisdom from individuals long gone. They were, after all, only people.

Happiness: Making It

I've downloaded a video on Daniel Gilbert from the TED Podcast, but you guys can watch it on youtube if you want.

The part that stimulates me the most is this notion of synthesized happiness, not simply on the nature of synthetic happiness, its incompatibility with choice.

We have a remarkable capacity to cope, something I always felt Seneca underestimated. We have an evolutionary need to aim high, to set goals we cannot reach so that we can at least go somewhere when we work towards them.

Whether we reach goals or not, it's nice to have them. Going forward is better than sitting around smoking a joint (though you can be happy that way too).

People ask how I motivate myself to do things, mostly when atheism comes up, and I tell them it's not because I want to make myself happy. Not that I don't like being happy, but because I already am happy and, as Gilbert points out, I could be just as happy not working as I am working.

I do it because I want to push myself and the world around me. There is something to be said for pushing the limits of human thought, and though I am not delusional enough to believe I'm at the forefront of that, joining in and doing what I can is important.

Dan Dennett talks about his soundbite for finding significance and purpose in life: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

So find purpose. Happiness, synthetic or otherwise (I'm not a huge fan of the differentiation), will show up on its own time.

Boredom: An Ethical Quagmire

Boredom is, I think, the most common affliction among modern students. School is boring, homework is boring, and so on. Rarely do we find something inspiring and, as a result, rarely are we happy.

There are some great stories about the problem of stagnation and while I don't believe that it's ever possible to really come to a complete stop, but I know that some moments are more inspiring than others, and I know that we can't always be filled up, or change the course of history like the March on Washington.

The real problem, though, is how do I address boredom?

There are people who tell you that you have to work. You just do. Why? Because you do.

There are reasons to get good grades and reasons to make money, which justifies the boredom in some degree, but can't the boredom be removed? Can't we be productive and happy? Or is what Twain had to say in Pudd'n'head Wilson pretty much right, that we have to do what we'd rather not.

I have always stood firm behind the belief that if something is boring you, then you should look for a way to make it interesting, or question whether or not it is really important for you to be doing it at all. Sometimes the conclusions will get you into trouble. My dad, of course, has never been happy when I've decided that homework is often a waste of time.

The point, though, is not to replace boredom with nothing. Don't fill the void with T.V. for the sake of T.V. (it can be great if you're watching something you care about). Don't use this as an excuse to escape work because you're lazy. This is really where it devolves to the honor system.

Do something that is going to make you think. Watch something that is going to make you think about anything. Download a TED talk that looks interesting or surf youtube looking for videos that expand your brain (whether it's your musical taste or your understanding of science). Link your way through wikipedia articles on physics or history.

Sam Harris talks about changing your moment-to-moment perception of the universe, and that's what we should be shooting for.

If you're bored, like I am, try to fundamentally change the way you think about everything. Trust me, it's a lot of fun.

Why "I" Matters

There's a challenge I pose to myself regularly, though it's not really a challenge, it's a question: Why?

Why is this important?

Why is this relevant?

Why does this matter?

The more I work on this concept of self, of consciousness and of identity (I don't like to think of it purely as a conscious problem, as I think that the conscious problem leaves out some very important elements of identity), the more I challenge myself to prove that it is more than just a philosophical exercise.

I find that when I use this study I often cop-out, I discuss issues of self-awareness and control of the circumstances. These are my simple answers, my textbook solutions to a question that I really should challenge myself with, not simply answer for the sake of answering, as the entire notion of answering the question for the sake of answering the question really is self-defeating.

So, why? Why is a notion of self important?

It is important because it defines ethics. No study of ethics, no legal system can exist without a substantial definition, without a recognition of self, of "I."

When I read legal documents, I see a lot of the same jargon repeated regularly. There is "Party A" and "Party B." All of our ethical standards in the legal world are contingent on the notion of entities, and so for me to set ethical boundaries for myself, for me to create an ethos by which I should live, I must first define "I."

The ego, as Freud would have termed it, defines our nature and our interaction with the world around us. Freud tried to explain the nature of the ego, how it is inculcated with certain ideas, how it comes to be as it is, and I realize, the more I read about Freud, how completely he failed in certain respects, purely because he lacked many of the components that are now available to us, like an understanding of neurological physiology (something all modern conscious philosophers site regularly).

It's not my intention, as it was for Freud, to create an entire system of rehabilitation based on my conclusions. If the conclusions, in due course, allow for such a possibility, then I'll cross that bridge when I get there, but for now I'll leave that very much alone.

The principle reason I want to define what and who I am is to understand what behaviors, acts and events I am in control of, what I can (and should) be held responsible for, and find a way to live in accordance with that ethos. Maybe this is ambitious, but it seems that any sense of ethics must begin with the fundamentals, so that is where I intend to start.

Elbow Room

For people who know me personally, and have had conversations with me about what I want to do with my life, I don't make it much of a secret that it is a dream to do my masters at Tufts, if only to work under Professor Daniel Dennett (though there is something I romanticize about Boston). It shouldn't surprise people that getting a personal email back from Professor Dennett when I send him a couple of questions on free will and the implications of "chance" was mindblowing for me.

He pointed me towards one of his books, a piece of text called "Elbow Room," which is a fantastic study in free will and the nature of choice in a naturalistic society.

The truth is, free will in the absolute sense is a really frustrating concept.

It's something we want. We want to think for ourselves. We want to make our own decisions. Most importantly, we want to be in absolute control of our surroundings.

The truth is, wanting something to be true isn't a reason to accept it to be true. This is what bothers me about free will. Anything that sounds too good to be true, I have found, at the risk of being cliche, usually is.

If you believe, as I do, that you are the product of your experiences, and that your consciousness is shaped by the things that you have gone through and things that have happened, and only by things that have happened, there are certain implications.

Our choices are a manifestation of our consciousness, of the Self, and if the past shapes the Self, then the past is in control of the future.

Think of it like a two-tiered puppet master.

The Self controls the choices, manipulates the present, but the past sits above the Self with marionette strings. This is what I find most fascinating.

We know that we make choices, that our choices have impacts (and that sometimes those impacts are massive). I make choices every day, like when I choose to have eggs for breakfast instead of cereal, but my past, my relationships with eggs and cereal and the circumstances that have shaped my present feelings, motivate my choice.

This is a demon, like any of Descartes.

What's important, it seems, is not so much accepting that our past will dictate our experiences, but understanding the past that would otherwise dictate them, and considering it. There are people who believe that the gut is always right, but if you consider the nature of your gut, why it is leading you where it is, it will let you screen the decisions that might put you in a less than desirable situation.

There is a concept in martial arts, a Japanese term that I have found myself considering often. Zanshin. It is, to many martial artists, a state of complete and total awareness both of yourself and your enemies, of your past and your future.

Don't simply be accepting. Be aware, and let that piece of who you are guide your decisions to make you a better person.

Rediscovering this Project

I loved working on this, and since I resurrected the book that bore, initially at least, the same name, I'm going to start this back up again.

If you want to follow the day to day stuff, RUFreeYet is always there.

For the long stuff, the stuff I love and care about deeply, this is where it's at.