Scrutiny

Of Coffee and Conspiracies

2009-03-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

I like to watch the news in the morning as I'm waking up. I'm not looking for penetrating analysis or in depth coverage, just a thoughtful listing of major world events. My brain cells require a considerable amount of caffeine before operating at recognizably human levels and prior to that state my amoeba-like mind cannot handle much more than a listing of headlines.

That said, I cannot stand lies. Whether they are lies of omission, lies of exaggeration, or simply that the talking heads are pandering to stereotypical fears and prejudices, my pre-caffeinated ire will be triggered. For this reason I always avoid Fox News, the most corrupt news organization I know of.

So you can imagine my Neanderthal reaction when I found that MSNBC was missing from my Cable channels. Instead, the screen had the stock message for channels I haven't paid for - something like, “No, no, you naughty person - you haven't paid for this channel. But if you want it call this number . . .” Quickly I checked a random smattering of other channels. They were all working as normal.

And then something odd happened. What if Charter Communications, a company known for a somewhat conservative bent, decided to prevent people from watching Rachel Maddow? Perhaps, in a deep dark cavern surrounded by thugs in black suits the Board of Charter, frothing at the mouth and giggling insanely, hatched the plot to deny their customers the liberal news counterpoint to Fox News.

Muttering incoherently, I snatched the phone book and phone and dialed “The Man”, aka The Cable Company. Unfortunately, the woman on the other end of the line was concerned and helpful. It turns out there was a “Network Problem” that the tech people would be working to resolve shortly. Feeling a little deflated I admitted to my pre-coffee conspiracy fantasy. She laughed and told me that MSNBC is still a channel I receive and it should be operating normally soon.

So, what was the “something odd” I mentioned above? The oddness was in my conspiracy fantasy. I am not a conspiracy theorist or fan. I tend to smirk inwardly at all conspiracy theories because of a basic pessimism - I believe that the average human being is, all things considered, of average intelligence. Don't get me wrong, I consider myself to be of average intelligence as well. But, if history is any indicator, we're not half as smart as we think we are.

What does our intellectual mundaneness have to do with conspiracies? Every conspiracy theory I have every heard of (and I've heard of many) assumes that most people are really smart. Conspiracy theorists assume people are so smart, in fact, that they operate on the principle that mundane explanations just cannot be true. For example, the CIA and the FBI couldn't be so stupid to have missed the signs of an impending 9/11! Or, could they be that stupid?

I tend to subscribe to a hybrid view of philosopher Hannah Arendt and writer Terry Pratchett. According to Arendt real evil is neither glamorous nor special. Murderers do not lurk in the shadows. Rapists do not salivate while goggling their prey. Genocidal political parties do not include the mass murder of innocents in their propaganda. No, most murder victims are murdered by people they know. As are most rape victims raped by a acquaintance. And, genocidal political parties generally pontificate about justice and love while they slaughter people in plain sight. No, evil is banal - ordinary and mundane. So, when I hear elaborate 9/11 conspiracy theories I can't help but think that the real monsters are being let off the hook because they don't look monstrous enough.

Terry Pratchett, my favorite author, has made the following insightful observation somewhere in his copious work: The average IQ of a group is inversely proportional to the size of the group. That is, one person can be a genius but put hundreds of geniuses together and you get an organization that can barely tie its own shoes. Ask any ten people to conspire about anything and my expectation is that my mother could get nine out of the ten to trip themselves up within twenty minutes.

Now, perhaps I'm being gullible. Perhaps I'm just the sort of person “The Man” is hoping to dupe. But, on the other hand, gullible people are usually stubbornly optimistic. I, on the other hand, am stubbornly pessimistic (at least about human intelligence).

Of course, there have been conspiracies that have since been proven. The Tuskegee Syphilis studies (in which African American men infected with Syphilis were denied life saving penicillin treatments), and the White House leaking CIA agent Valerie Plame's name (retaliation for her husband's honesty about the Iraq War) come to mind. But notice, there are no extra terrestrials involved in these conspiracies. There is no secret world government controlling current events. Instead, actual conspiracies tend to be petty, hateful, and ill-executed.

These are my views on conspiracy theories in general - at least, these are my views after sufficient coffee. If you have been itching to set me straight throughout this issue of Scrutiny, please, come to our next Philosopher's Cafe this Friday (March 20th), 7pm at the Barnes & Noble Cafe.

But if I'm not there, suspect the Men in Black.

Volume I, Issue 2

2009-01-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

My Favorite Question

“So, you’re a philosopher, eh? Well then, what’s the meaning of life?”

I can’t tell you how often I have been put on the spot this way. I wish I could say that I have a reply that is both profound and pithy. Sometimes my answers are better than others. Sometimes, I think “Wow, that was good – remember it!” But the truth of the matter is that my questioner is almost never interested in what I have to say. The moment I begin to give any answer – even a really good one – their eyes glaze over and they’ve already lost interest. Then, when I stop talking, they either change the subject or they give me ‘the real’ meaning of life.

After years of being a philosopher I have come to the following conclusion: People do not want to be told what the meaning of life is (even if they ask you to tell them). At first, this didn’t make any sense to me. To my mind, if you don’t want the answer, you don’t ask the question. However, I have since realized that non-philosophers ask questions for a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with procuring answers. For instance, we sometimes ask questions just to stump the other person (hah, I showed you Mister Big Shot Philosopher), or to elicit the anticipated response (oh, it’s all just a matter of opinion isn’t it?), or simply to fill the empty conversational space with something appropriate (what the heck do you ask a philosopher?!).

Aside from these pedestrian considerations I think there might be another very good reason that people are not generally interested in my views on the meaning of life. The phrase, “the meaning of life” could be interpreted in a couple of ways. Most importantly, do they mean life in general or their lives in particular? If they are interested in the meaning of their lives in particular then no one else’s answer will seem, well, meaningful. The answer is supposed to be inspirational, insightful and motivating. Another person’s answer – no matter how nifty it is – will be rejected unless they can make it their own.

Seen in this light, the question “What is the meaning of life?” is a non-starter. Instead, we should be asking, “What is the meaning of my life?” Now that is an interesting question – don’t you think?

But if another person can’t answer your meaning of life question for you is there anything for a philosopher to help you with? If philosophers can’t even answer the most quintessentially philosophical question then why are there philosophers at all? After an uncomfortable moment’s contemplation I do think there is something a philosopher can do to help people answer their own meaning of life questions.

Philosophers can help you imagine, formulate, clarify and evaluate your answers to the meaning of your life. We can’t, and shouldn’t even try, to tell you what the meaning of your life is. Instead, we should help you to answer their own question.

To this end I will lay out the conditions of any satisfactory answer to the meaning of life question:
1. The goal: Keep in mind that your answer is supposed to describe a life that is not wasted, the sort of life in which you have no unbearable regrets. You should be able to imagine lying on your deathbed with a sense of satisfaction at a life well lived.
2. Value: Your goal will imply that some things are more valuable than others. Perhaps your answer will imply that physical satisfaction is less valuable than integrity or that making a positive difference in the world is more important than consumerism. No matter what your answer, you should be able to deduce the values inherent in that answer.
3. Moral code: The values you deduce from your answer will shape the moral code that you live by. Clarifying your moral code is vital to living well. How will you know if you have been a good person if you have no clear idea what a good person is like? How will know what ‘the good life’ is if you haven’t clarified your ethics?
4. Practical Strategies: Your answer should also be practical enough to enable you to develop strategies for dealing with life’s adversities and successes. Good answers help us deal with all of the weirdness of life in a positive manner.

As you can see, there may be no more difficult task than answering your own meaning of life question. It would be far easier to go through the motions of life, from one distraction to the next, until we run out life and distractions. However, the cost of a life of distraction is devastating. There is nothing rarer than your time and attention. It would be the height of foolishness to squander our most precious commodities.

But there is no good reason to make this task harder than it will already be. We can learn from each other's experiences. So, email me with your thoughts on the meaning of your life and I'll publish them here together in the next newsletter. In particular, I am interested in your goals and values. To start us off I will share my goals and values with you.

The meaning of John's Life:

The Goal: To excel as a honorable and wise son, husband, and father who enriches the lives he touches.

My Values: I see these goals as requiring the following values: Integrity, because hypocrites cannot be noble or wise. Love, because being a good son, husband and father as well as enriching the lives of those I deal with requires caring about others. Enjoyment, because excelling at these goals is fulfilling, worthwhile and satisfying.

Don't leave me alone out here - leave a comment with your answer to the meaning of life!

(In writing this article I was influenced by a book I highly recommend, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine. Oxfor University Press 2009.)

The Legacy of Prejudice

2008-11-09T10:42:00.000-08:00

With the passage of California's Proposition 8 the majority has succeeded in denigrating a minority.

There are two issues I would like to discuss in this regard:

1. Which is more important, equality before the law or democratic ideals?

and

2. Is the homosexual orientation immoral?

One: Though it is not taught in basic High School government classes, the ideals that modern democracies are founded upon do not coexist peacefully. Pure democracy is not, to my knowledge, practiced anywhere on the planet. Supposedly, it was practiced for a time in ancient Athens but I happen to know that even this factotum is not above the scrutiny of historians.

Plato famously scorned the idea of democracy as, essentially, the blind leading the blind. He favored a system in which the wise lead the blind whether they like it or not.

At best, Aristotle thought of democracy as not being quite as bad as tyranny but, on the other hand, nowhere near as good as aristocracy. Aristotle even distinguished between well run democracies (which he called timocracies) and poorly run democracies (which he called democracies). So even the word democracy is derogatory for Aristotle.

Democracy wasn't thought highly of until the Enlightenment as scholars and politicians began to think of everyone (well, everyone like me) as being equally capable of governing themselves. Being governed without your consent, the usual position of most human beings for recorded history, became identified with slavery. And slavery, an institution as old as civilization, came to be seen as abhorrent - a sin against the inherent equality of all human beings.

The move toward democracy then, the motivation and justification for the democratic process itself, was and is an abiding faith in the equality of all humanity. Democracy isn't our preferred form of government because it is the most efficient or wise or just but because it is, all things considered, the most equitable.

Therefore, it is putting the cart before the horse to insist that democracy is more important than equality because democracy is justified by the ideal of equality. Equality is the goal toward which democracy naturally aims. To use democracy to undercut equality, then, is to sacrifice the goal in favor of the tool. Equality trumps democracy because it is the point of democracy. Democracy without equality is but tyranny in disguise.

Two, I have read the passages in the Christian Bible which are most often interpreted as meaning that God condemns homosexuality. I understand that most, but not all, Christians believe that homosexuality is immoral for this reason.

However, I also understand that I don't live in Iran, or Saudi Arabia or North Korea. These countries have founding sacred documents that they use to answer every moral question. Are Americans infidels? Is capitalism evil? Should Israel be destroyed? There's no need to think these questions through because we have sacred texts that tell us what to believe. In case you were wondering, you are an infidel (apparently), capitalism is evil (apparently) and Israel should be destroyed (apparently). These are the obvious conclusion we must come to if we are going to turn off our brains every time a moral question arises.

But I won't turn off my brain. I don't live in Iran or North Korea. I live in a nation founded (whether the founders knew it or not) on the ideal of equality. I will not base my analysis of the morality of any action solely on any sacred text even though I happen to think that some sacred texts are pretty groovy. The answers to moral questions can be informed by the Bible but not determined by the Bible because the Bible does not define morality. Popular opinion can play a role in our moral analysis but in the end popular opinion does not define morality. No, I will use the concepts of virtue ethics (family values) to answer this question.

I have heard it argued that homosexuals molest children, run away from their family responsibilities, are promiscuous and dress funny.

And, do you know what? Its all true. There have been homosexuals who have molested children. There have been homosexuals who have shirked their family responsibilities. There have been promiscuous homosexuals. And, indeed, some homosexuals dress funny. And yet, there are also homosexuals who are loving partners and parents, who raise healthy well adjusted children. They don't raise their children to be straight or gay because there is no way to raise your children to be straight or gay. There are homosexuals who are Republicans and Democrats and Independents. There are homosexuals who are well respected priests, bishops, rabbis, business leaders, public servants and just all around nice people. In short, homosexuals are normal human beings. Some are good people and some are bad people but most are just average.

Normal, healthy homosexual relationships take place between consenting adults. Normal healthy long term homosexual relationships tend to be monogamous. Is infidelity an issue in homosexual relationships? Just as surely as it is in heterosexual relationships. Are spousal abuse and STDs issues for homosexuals? Just as surely as these are issues for heterosexuals. Do homosexuals tend to have more health problems than heterosexuals? I have heard anecdotal evidence of this but I have to ask the following questions: If so, is this because of the homosexual sex act itself or because the homosexual community has often not used condoms (as for instance other minority groups)? And, secondly, since when is it just to force someone to stop harming them selves? We allow people to drink and smoke and overeat even though there is far more proof that these activities are harmful than homosexual sex.

In the end, however, the real issue here is the questioning of the integrity and moral character of homosexuals based merely on their sexual orientation. It is intolerably prejudicial to assume that being homosexual makes you molest children, leave your family or have promiscuous sex. The evidence for these ugly claims is all anecdotal. It is the same kind of evidence used by bigots to argue that black men are more violent by nature than white men or that Africans are less intelligent than Europeans. People intent upon finding despicable attributes in other people will never be disappointed, wherever they look. Prejudiced people tend to find what they look for.

Christians should look to their own past. Christians were once thought to be promiscuous baby-eaters intent upon undercutting the moral fiber of society. Disgusting stories, eye-witness accounts, and the common prejudice of the day all contributed to the "common knowledge" that Christians were morally depraved. Jews, perhaps more than any other global minority have endured the slander of prejudice. Jews were thought to be baby-eaters as well, to be power hungry, greedy, world dominating monsters.

To be prejudiced is to be someone who pre-judges. Those who dismiss homosexuals as automatically immoral are prejudiced. They prejudge all homosexuals as bad people simply because they are homosexuals. Then, they ask leading questions, that presume the answer they are looking for. The prejudice is in the questions: "Isn't it true that group X is morally depraved?" or "If we accept even the despicable group X then won't we have to also accept child molesters?" or "If we allow group X to have the same rights as we do won't children think its OK to be a member of group X?" Each of these questions presumes a negative view of group X. As I have shown above, there is every reason to view homosexuals the same way we view heterosexuals. But these questions deny this rational appraisal of the situation without even addressing the problem head on. These sorts of questions are deceitful and sneaky. They convince by guile, not reason. In this way prejudiced people tend to find what they look for.

Homosexuals are normal people. That means that they face all the same moral challenges that heterosexuals face. It means that they have the same failings that heterosexuals face. It means we are all human, equally human.

One day, I hope, we will overcome this ugly and irrational anti-homosexual bent. But I know that the road to equality is never ending. The pursuit of justice, like the pursuit of wisdom can never be over.