Justice David Souter

The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we're in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed by what we do. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right. - Justice David Souter

According to Jeffrey Toobin's book The Nine, Souter has a decidedly low-tech lifestyle. He writes with a fountain pen and does not use e-mail. According to Toobin, Souter has no cell phone, no answering machine, and no television. He prefers to drive back to New Hampshire for the summer.Souter also does his own home repairs, and spent five hours fixing his own roof in 2008.

To Have a Child, or Not, That is the Question

Plurk's short responses do not really allow for lengthy philosophical replies.

Someone has asked the question:

If you were asked "Why do you *want* a child?" what would you respond?

So, I shall try to reply here at some length, and then just post the link into the Plurk thread.

I shall add to this blog over the course of the coming hours and perhaps days, so if you have some interest in what I write, then do save the link and check back from time to time.

A young teenage relative of mine, years ago, now in her 30s, had no thought or desire to become pregnant, but it happened. She had her child, a baby girl who is now in her teens, and her dedication to her baby inspired her to turn her life around by earning a G.E.D. putting herself through college, earning a college degree, and building a career which provided a very good living, with house, cars, etc.

Not every story has a happy ending.

Her teenage daughter is now very troubled, even though the parents did everything in the world to provide a life that would make their daughter happy. Their teenage daughter is in an abusive relationship with an older girl, is failing in school courses, and is experimenting with alcohol and tobacco.

When one decides to have a child, there are no guarantees. You cannot know if your child will be successful or delinquent. You cannot even know if your child will have normal health and intelligence or be handicapped physically or mentally.

My father's father had two boys and a girl. One boy was a lifelong alcoholic and had no children. My father's sister had one boy who had two marriages but no children. My father had only one child, me, and I have never had any children. So, raising three children is no guarantee that you will have descendants to pass along the family name, or whatever other benefits you feel that posterity will bring you.

I may well add to this blog, but I shall save what I have now and post this link to Plurk and Facebook.

What Is Freedom

Viktor Frankl states (in "Man's Search for Meaning") that our final freedom, which no one can take from us, is how we choose to REGARD our circumstances. Freedom is a word which has many different meanings in various contexts, but does not imply absolute freedom. Sartre in the opening pages of "Being and Nothingness" basically says that we are doomed to be free, since to totally give up ones freedom would require an exercise of freedom. Read (or re-read) Camus' novel "The Stranger", and think about the limited freedom of choices which the protagonist Merseult has at each stage in the story.

Aristotle talks about "anangke" or necessity. For example, as a sphere increases in size, the surface area increases as a function of the SQUARE of the radius, while the VOLUME increases as a function of the CUBE of the radius, which means that a cell cannot grow to the size of Cleveland, because the ratio of cell mass to cell surface becomes at some point too great to allow for metabolism.

Curiously, the Qur'an finds the notion that God can be limited even by God's own decrees to be unacceptable. Hence there is one verse (Surah 2:106) None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten but We substitute something better or similar; knowest thou not that Allah hath power over all things?

One can see how this notion of an unlimited freedom of God can become a "sticky wicket"

http://inthenameofallah.org/Abrogated%20%20%20Mansookh%20Verses.html

(note: the above link is critical of the Qur'an)

By contrast, the Judaeo-Christian scriptures describe a Deity
which chooses to be self-limiting (e.g. "for God cannot lie" and "I have sworn and shall not repent", etc.)


"Freedom" suffers from the problem of "qualia." For example, it is fine to speak of a red flower or a red wagon or a red sunset, but when we attempt to abstract to a notion of "red in itself", or to further abstract to "color" then we run into philosophical problems.

Abraham Lincoln wisely observed that "in a conflict, each side asserts that they have God behind their cause, but they should rather ask whether they are on God's side." I saw an "independent" movie (Indie) about a young German-American who decides to move to Germany after WWII to help with the reconstruction. He asks a Catholic priest there, "Each side prayed to God, but God cannot be on BOTH sides." The priest mentioned that verse "ye are neither hot nor cold so therefore I spew you out of my mouth", hinting that possible God views each soul's motivation on an individual level, and not on the basis of Yankee/Confederate, Allied/Axis, etc.

The devil is in the DETAILS. There is a story about a man who is taken down to hell and given a vision of what hell is. He sees a long table loaded with delicious plates of food. People are tied to their chairs, each with a very long spoon tied to one arm. They are starving because they cannot put the food on the spoon and get it to their mouths. Then the same man is whisked up to heaven and given a vision of heaven. He sees the same long table and the same people tied to their chairs with the same long spoons. But each person is dipping his spoon and feeding the fellow across the table. Both heaven and hell have the same limitations, but heaven is more pleasant because the people there choose to work with the limitations in a less selfish fashion.

When the wise Solomon wrote "There are ways which seemeth good to a man, but the end thereof is death" he was speaking directly to YOU. When the Prophet Jeremiah wrote "all of your righteousness is as a filthy rag" he was writing directly to YOU. When Jesus said in that parable "go away, I never knew you" he is speaking to you.

Indie just means it was an artsy obscure movie with a kind of existential theme, so mainstream Hollywood would never touch it. And you would only see it on cable channels that feature such obscure films with existentialist type themes. You have probably seen "City of Angels" with Nicholas Cage, but you never saw what it was based on "Wings of Desire" (Himmel Uber Berlin) by German director Wim Wenders
staring Peter Falk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Desire

Jallaludin Rumi said "There is a place beyond the notions of right doing and wrong doing. I shall meet you there."

The first Sufi Martyr, Hallaj, as he was led to the gallows for execution, for blasphemy, said to his orthodox Sunni executioners, "If I had had YOUR experiences, I could do no other than condemn such as I to execution for blasphemy."

But if you had had MY experiences, you would have no other choice than to exclaim as I did "I am one with Allah".

if you had led my life, and had my experiences, you would see things as I do. If I had led your life and had your experiences, I would see things as you do.

Yet we are both, in a sense free, but at the same time, we are both in bondage.

Do you want to become as I am? If yes, then I ask,
Why?

Do you want me to become as you are?
If yes, then I ask again,
Why?


No two people share exactly the same belief in God. Jefferson wrote that in a letter to a friend. There are upwards of 1 billion Roman Catholics, which means that there are 1 billion different notions of what Roman Catholicism is. Many are troubled by notions of clean and unclean; right and wrong; them and us. And you are not alone. Many in America are troubled by the same thoughts, questions.

For an American were to read Salman Rushdie's novel "Satanic Verses", it is very unlikely that they would understand what Rushdie is trying to do, because you have not grown up in a culture of pluralism and syncretism where Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam have co-existed for millenia and have given rise to such hybridizations as Sikhism and Sufism. Most Americans cannot understand such a book. They have not lived on a diet of Bollywood "theological" movies about the Hindu scriptures of the Ramayan and the Mahabharat. I have experienced all these things for years, and so I can understand Rushdie. If you did what was necessary to understand Rushdie as I do, it would involve transforming yourself into something totally alien to what you are, and perhaps something un-American (not in the sense of McCarthyism, not in a bad sense). The majority of the world is un-American in a way that Americans find difficult to understand or accept.

It is not a matter of finding all the answers (which is a vain Sisyphean task), but rather to stem the flood of questions. Don Quixote never slays the enemy or finds his Dulcinea, but yet reaches a point where he ceases his wanderings and quest. Every question conceals a quest, and quests often lead to violence and confrontations.

You have succeeded in provoking thought. This is just the sort of dialog I look for. And it is like a mental exercise for me, gymnastics if you will.

Notice how doctors and lawyers always speak of "the practice of medicine" and "the practice of law."

Certain things are never a destination but are always a process or exercise.

What we are doing here is similar to Zen koan practice. There are many books on koans, but one in particular, "The Iron Cow of Zen", by Albert Low (published by QUEST no less) is a very good illustration of what we are doing here, and how Eastern philosophy deals with the human problem
in a very different fashion that Western philosophy.

Jason, it is good that you ask such questions, and that you are looking about, willing to consider unlikely answers from very different traditions in distant lands.

Your mind is open. Your openness to all these ideas is a tremendous freedom in itself.

If you take a look at Plato's Republic, which is a long dialog, something like ours, which Socrates has with some friends, you will find what is called "Plato's Cave Analogy" which is a sort of parable that Socrates tells to illustrate what is involved in the problem of comprehending reality. Many people are bound in the cave. They cannot turn about but must stair at a wall. There is a fire behind them which casts shadows on the wall. (Its sort of like that movie, Matrix). One fellow frees himself, and exits the cave into the sunlight, to see reality in itself, rather than the shadows of illusion. He feels compassion for those still in bondage, so he returns to the shadowy world of the cave, and attempts to free the others.

Windows Of Opportunity Which Open And Close

My friend opened a fortune cookie which said "act before the window of opportunity closes" and she thought "what the hell does THAT mean."

Here is my response.

Life is a series of "windows of opportunity."

Those windows are constantly opening, and then closing. Often we are not aware. We have many choices as we pass through life. When we are age 6, we can choose to take up ballet, and we have some small chance of becoming a professional. When we turn 20, we can still choose to take up ballet, but we will probably never be professional, because most top professionals start training at the age of 6.

In our teens and 20s, we have windows of opportunity for education and training. As we reach our 30s and 40s, gradually those windows close partly because our energy and aptitude diminish with age.

For women, the "biological clock" ticking away is an obvious window of opportunity which eventually closes.

Of course, simply because a window of opportunity is OPEN does not mean that we should defenestrate ourselves by jumping out of it. That is, the opportunity for ballet, or marriage or having children is not necessarily the right choice for any given person.

But then, fortune cookies are designed to be generic and open to subjective interpretation.

Now that I am 60, I see how many windows of opportunity have passed me by, or perhaps it is I who passed them by for one reason or another.

My friend has made the choice to say no to the kind of heavy prescription medications to which many (Michael Jackson and Keith Ledger and Elvis Presley, et al.) fell victim. I made the choice to say no to alcohol and tobacco over a year ago.

Some windows may never open for us again. Other windows are always opened to us, but we need to close them.

Childrens questions about sex

Child's Question: Where was I when you and mom got married?
Father's Answer: A part of you was in mommy and a part was in daddy?
Child's Next Question: Where was my HEAD?

My reaction:
It may more prudent to provide children with accurate information when they request it, to the level which they can understand. What you said IS clever, but obviously part of your cleverness is your success in being accurate, in a sense, but evasive and deceptive in a larger sense of OMISSION. With all the media available to children, they will put two and two together and figure out a lot. So, they may look back on such evasive answers and feel that you were less than honest, or perhaps they will sense some level of shame about simple facts of life. My step son is now 25. I came along when he was 7. I always treated him like an adult with each question that he asked. My approach seems to have worked out ok so far. I think he always felt that he could ask me about anything and I would give him an honest, sincere answer and not talk down to him as a second class intellect. My parents, in the 1950s, gave me evasive answers. In retrospect, I felt betrayed.

I grew up in the 1950's. EVERYONE answered children in that fashion, and did so, because it was a time and culture in which one could NOT say the word "pregnant" on the Jack Paar Tonight show. You must say "expecting". Words like "pregnant were considered filthy.

We lived in a world of euphemisms. When I was age 5, my mother scolded me for saying that someone was "stupid." She explained that stupid is a naughty word, and that I should instead say that someone is "silly."

When I was age 10, I received a megaphone for Christmas (how DUMB is THAT to give a kid a MEGAPHONE). So, of course, I decided to begin reading GENESIS aloud into the megaphone. When I got to the part that says "Adam knew Eve and she conceived" my mother came storming out of the kitchen to stop me. Then, she paused in mid air like one of those Bugs Bunny cartoon double-takes typical of Daffy Duck or Elmer Fudd or Porky Pig or Wiley Cayote.... she was upset that I was saying something improper.

Parent: She is only age 3

Response:

I was curious about the age, and assumed she must be very young. I am not criticizing you. Like I said, I lived in a generation of parents who spoke about storks, cabbage leaves, toothfairies, etc. But it is an interesting topic to blog about. When my stepson was age 4, his mom HAD to take him to day care. She felt that she HAD to tell him a lot of things about a problem which is an obvious concern in these times, e.g. "if ANYONE ever touches you down here, even if it is a relative, you MUST tell me, and even if they tell you something bad will happen, you still must tell me... etc." So, at age 4, he knew a lot about sexuality because of all the concerns about the problem of abuse. I have vivid memories from age 3 and 4. She now has notions that her head was one place, while her body was another. I don't know if that is preferable to simply hearing something different and more accurate. I know I harbored misinformation from the age of 4 that did me more harm than good.

I know there are whole series of books and videos, perhaps on the Teletubbie level, designed to answer toddlers curiosity about gender and toilet and birth and other mysteries. I have no idea if they are beneficial or harmful. The only real wisdom I ever remember about children's questions is this: "If they ask something, they are ready to learn something. Give them little increments of accurate information, until they seem satisfied. When they stop asking, then they know enough for now, and dont need further info or greater detail."

Obviously you can't turn the clock back and relive the moment. But, suppose your answer had been "You were not born yet." Now, the ball is back in the child's court. Perhaps she will feel satisfied with that answer. Perhaps she will ask something about what it means to be born. If she did ask that, you might show her a picture of an expectant mother and say, "see, the baby is in the tummy." She might be content with that information, and stop asking questions. If she questions what that means, or how the baby gets in the tummy, then you might say "Well, lets get a book and see what it says, because books are the best way for us to learn things." Now, each step of the way, you have given a reasonable true answer which is not misleading or evasive. And her questions might have turned to the nature of books, and why they are the best way to learn things. This line of dialog avoids notions of disembodied heads.

Parent: Perhaps you are overanalyzing.

Reply:

I went through St. John's. The word "overanalyze" has no real meaning for me. I read Denniston's massive tome on Greek Particles. Now many jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups are "too much". Ask Jack LaLanne who is doing them in his 90s. This is what I do every day. No one "pushed my buttons". I stumble across an interesting topic, and then I try to think deeply about it. Look at my posting history for 10 years on the internet. This is my mental habit. It is neither wise nor foolish. It is just what I am, my nature. Who knows, perhaps something that I say will help someone to make a decision in some future circumstance. Or perhaps I am misguided and will cause harm by expressing my opinions. To overdo anything means in some sense to do harm. More dangerous than the unanswered question, is the unquestioned answer.

I did think that this three-year-old must be rather brilliant to deduce that her head was in one place, while the rest of her was somewhere else. Piaget devised an intelligence test for small children, in which the child is show a short squat cylinder of water, which is then poured into a tall slender container (giving the illusion of MORE water). The child is then asked which container held MORE water. A 5 year old in India pointed to the first, squat container, now empty. The psychologist asked her "Why?" The child said not a word, but dipped her finger into the empty container, to moisten it, and then touched her finger to the dirt floor, and held it up to demonstrate that, indeed, more water had been in the first container, for some drops still remained.

Would YOU Assassinate Hitler?

Suppose you were in a Bonhoeffer type situation. Suppose it were revealed to you that a certain person was going to develop a weapon of mass destruction and use it to kill one billion innocent people. Suppose you were suddenly placed before this person with a gun in your hand. You know that if you assassinate this person, the weapon technology will never be developed and those one billion people will never be killed. WHAT DO YOU DO? Do you commit murder and suffer whatever the moral consequences of your act with the thought that "the end justifies the means", OR, so you refrain from playing God and taking the law into your own hands on the grounds that you become just as bad as the person you assassinate? Tough choice for anyone. I can tell you what Dr. Who (Tom Baker) decided with regard to the Daleks. But what does YOU decide to do, based upon YOUR values and beliefs?

Next, tell me how Mohandas Gandhi would have handled the situation and what his reasoning would have been.

Sin as Missing The Mark

The Greek word in the New Testament that denotes "sin" is "hamartia" which has its origins in Homeric Greek as a word in archery to denote "missing the mark".

Remember the crucial scene in the Odyssey, where the suitors all fail to string the bow, and Ulysses is the only one to both string the bow, and shoot the arrow through the small target.

Here is how Aristotle used the word in "Poetics" and in "Nichomachian Ethics"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia

http://www.alislam.org/books/essence2/chap17.html

excerpt from above link:

"The meaning of the Arabic word for sin is to incline and to move away from the true centre. When a person moves away from God and withdraws from the light which descends upon the hearts from God, he is involved in a darkness which becomes a source of torment for him. Then he suffers the same type of torment of which type is his turning away. If he wishes to revert to the centre and transports himself to the spot where that light falls, he regains the light. As we observe in the world that we enjoy light in a room when we open its windows, in the same way, in the spiritual system to return to the true centre becomes the source of comfort and rescues from the suffering which had resulted from departing from the centre. This is called repentance. "

(end of excerpt)

http://de.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061011182924AAQLtiC

(excerpt from above link)
The Hebrew word for sin is avera. Teshuva (Hebrew תשובה, returning), is the way of atoning for sin in Judaism.
Judaism describes three levels of sin:
---o Pesha פשע or Mered - An intentional sin; an action committed in deliberate defiance of God; (Strong's Concordance :H6588 (פשעpesha', peh'shah). According to Strong it comes from the root (:H6586); rebellion, transgression, trespass.
---o Avon - This is a sin of lust or uncontrollable emotion. It is a sin done knowingly, but not done to defy God; (Strong's Concordance :H5771 (avon, aw-vone). According to Strong it comes from the root (:H5753); meaning perversity, moral evil:--fault, iniquity, mischief.
---o Cheit - חַטָּא This is an unintentional sin, crime or fault. (Strong's Concordance :H2399 (khate). According to Strong it comes from the root khaw-taw (:H2398, H2403) meaning "to miss, to err from the mark (speaking of an archer), to sin, to stumble."

The Arabic word for sin is ذنب dhanb. Tab\wba (returning), is the way of atoning for sin in Islam.

Islam distinguishes several gradations of sin:
---o sayyia, khatia: mistakes (Suras 7:168; 17:31; 40:45; 47:19 48:2)
---o itada, junah, dhanb: immorality (Suras 2:190,229; 17:17 33:55)
---o haram: transgressions (Suras 5:4; 6:146)
---o ithm, dhulam, fujur, su, fasad, fisk, kufr: wickedness and depravity (Suras 2:99, 205; 4:50, 112, 123, 136; 12:79; 38:62; 82:14)
---o shirk: ascribing a partner to Allah (Sura 4:48)

Every child is born “fitrat“ (nature) without any sin (guiltless or innocent) and he remains such unless he intentionally commits a sin (i.e. disobeys Allah's commandments). Muslims believe that Allah is angered by sin and punishes some sinners with the fires of Hell (jahannam), but that He is also the Merciful (ar-rahman) and the Forgiving (al-ghaffar), and forgives those who repent and serve Him.

The word in Arabic for "holy" is zakiyya, a word with the root meaning "purity". This form of the word principally means "innocent, pure, clean, faultless". Islam accepts that Jesus and his mother were zakiyya.

Throughout the Muslim world today it is generally believed that all of the prophets enjoyed an "isma", a protection against sin, and that they were accordingly sinless. It is one of the anomalies of Islam that this doctrine has been established and maintained against the plain teaching of the Quran and Hadith to the contrary.
Quelle(n):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
http://www.zoomnet.net/~bbratt/sin.html
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/
http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm
http://www.themodernreligion.com/misc/hh/major_sins.htm
http://www.islamic.org.uk/I4WM/sinof.htm
http://www.backtoislam.com/?p=69
http://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/mo-sinner.htm
(end of excerpt)