Think about this mystery: If you have a container filled with some gas then, if you examine the behavior of each molecule, each molecule seems totally free, random, irrational, unpredictable.
BUT, if you study the behavior of the entire container of gas, it conforms to very precise laws of temperature, pressure, flow, etc.
Think of the gas molecule as one person, individual, but think of the container of gas as the entire human race.
On a microcosmic level, everything is very free, random and unpredictable.
On a macrocosmic level, everything is constrained by very precise mathematical laws, and quite predictable.
We see the same paradox if we compare the smooth orderly predictable motions of galaxies in Relativity, with the surrealistic vagueness of quantum particles on a microcosmic level which flicker between being and non-being.
Our mind is very linear, addicted to logic, a certain specific kind of logic, Aristotelian, syllogistic, A implied B, B implies C, etc., etc.
We try to reduce everything to that logic and we try to resolve ambiguities, paradoxes. But, there are phenomena which do not fit into that logical scheme, such as the dual nature of light, behaving BOTH as a wave AND as a particle.
Our minds want to resolve what we see as a contradiction, (and contradictions make us uncomfortable.)
The idea is that we BOTH TRULY HAVE FREEDOM AT THE MOMENT of choice AND ALSO the outcome of all choices can be foreknown, without that foreknowledge predetermining them.
Think of it in this fashion:
We are in what we call the future, looking back into what we call the past, history and we see that Brutus chose to assassinate Caesar.
We do not feel that our knowledge in any way forced Brutus to choose one particular course of action.
If a little ant is wandering on a pavement, and I am standing as a giant, to see the overall pattern of that motion, then from a perspective which the ant cannot share, I can see that the ant is traveling, on the hot pavement, in a path which will ultimately bring the ant to the cool green grass. My FOREKNOWLDGE from my vantage point, does not rob the ant of the freedom of each step.
I am like a god to the ant, and the ant is unaware of my presence or nature.
Showing posts with label Essay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Essay. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Survival Advantages of Mortality and Discord
Survival Advantages of Mortality and Discord
We can never all agree upon anything of great significance. Have you ever noticed that? Even in democratic nations, there are at least two parties, if not more, in any election. There are Republicans and Democrats, there are Liberals and Conservatives, and perhaps all sorts of shades in between.
I have come to see mortality and discord as distinct survival advantages.
But, how can this be, you ask? How can there be an advantage in the fact that we are all doomed to die? How can there be an advantage to the fact that we can never arrive at unanimous agreement upon important issues?
How wonderful this world of ours would be (you say) if none of us would ever face death, and if all of us could share in one religion, one language, one culture, one nation, one philosophy, one economy and one single set of values and principles. Allow me to explain.
I see the vanished races of north American Indians, who dwelt for millennia in that continent, as having been very hardy because of natural selection, and kept hardy as a race by the rigors of survival. Modern man, by contrast, becomes a progressively weaker and less robust species because of high tech and increasing dependence on things like antibiotics, surgical procedures, insulin, etc., which in the short run greatly benefit individuals, but in the long run weaken the species.
Amoral nature, with its natural selection and survival of the fittest, seems to have a very different agenda which favors groups and species over individuals. Our society now seems to place the well-being and interest of the individual above the well-being and interests of the group as a whole. In the short run this emphasis on the individual is quite benevolent. But what is long-term benovelence? Does long-term benevolence sometimes wear the mask of cruelty and indifference?
Nature makes it difficult for the weak and defective to pass their genes on to another generation, but medicine and modern technology makes it easy for even the infertile to pass on their genetic traits to future generations. For me, the problem is so patently obvious. Physis and Nomos, Nature and Law, mortal enemies for eternity!
Of course, we may ocassionally discover some temporary cure for a particular disease, but then all those little pathogens turn around and produce thousands of generations in a short time, and evolve a resistant strain, so then we develop a different antibiotic, and so it goes, on and on, in
a vicious cycle, a Catch-22. Those pathogens desire immortality just as much as we. Their oeuvres are plagues.
As individuals, certainly we benefit from this medicine and technology, but as a species we were obviously better off under the amoral natural scheme of survival of the fittest. Now, as a species, we are gradually becoming weakened and dependent upon that medicine and technology. "Better Living Through Chemistry."
Mind you, I am not saying whether this increased dependence upon medicine and technology and genetic engineering and this progressive weakening of our species is bad or good in the long run. I am merely pointing it out as an observable phenomenon.
In an odd way, mortality is a survival advantage.
In Ham's Histology (a textbook from the 1960's), generation after generation of mice had their haemopoetic marrow tissue destroyed by radiation, and received a transplant of the same strain of tissue received by the previous generation
In theory, that culture of haemopoetic tissue should be immortal, but in practice, it was not, it became weak (exhibited its mortality.)
Here is why I think the property of immortality is a survival disadvantage for the species. That strain of haemopoetic tissue weakened because it was perpetuated asexually, with no chance for change, modification, evolution.
In theory, there is no reason why a strain of cells could not be asexually immortal (in fact, the hela cell cultures are one example), BUT, from an evolutionary point of view, that very immortality is a survival disadvantage, since it does not permit change and adaptation
http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/video/culture.html
Humanity's inability to reach universal consensus in philosophy, theology, politics/government is possibly related to the obvious survival advantage inherent in a genetic tendency towards diversity/uniqueness, so that some might be shoemakers, others soldiers, others scholars, others politicians, each happy in their ecological niche of specialization.
We might have evolved as a species capable of a higher degree agreement with one another, but that would have been a survival disadvantage.
If what I have said is the case, then that aspect of humanity has every bearing in the world on philosophy.
If everyone saw things the same way, then everyone would want to be a philosophy professor (or movie star) or president.... there would be no diversity... no one to live on mountain tops, no one at the polar circle, no one in the Amazon rain forests; that very diversity which was key to species survival now makes unanimous agreement difficult or impossible.
I think of the imaginative faculty of the human mind as a kaleidoscope, constantly churning, changing (almost by chance) , (and how interesting it is that a similar image of "the churning of the oceans" is given in the Vedas as the process by which nectar is produced)
Such a kaleidoscopic churning may produce many mathematical models (model theory), but then by an arduous process, we apply those random productions of imagination to reality, until one day someone stumbles upon a "match" between model and noumena, like Archimedes in the tub, shouts Eureka!, and runs naked through the streets.
For years, people called "imaginary numbers" imaginary precisely because it was felt they had no reality or analog, but now they are indespensable in treating such phenomena as radio waves.
Yet, the products of imagination are a part of reality.
The laws of physics and chemistry do not predict rabbits, but the existence of rabbits in no way defies the laws of physics. If you wanted to learn to play poker, would you study probability and statistics?
Obviously, gambling and gamblers came first, and then the mathematicians like Pascal turned their attention to it.
The universe will continue after our sun supernovas in 8 billion years, and humankind are extinct, and this 8 billion year from now doomsday is something which we could be addressing to preserve culture and knowledge, but no one is concerned because that doomsday seems so
remote.
There is no causal connection, I suspect, between the laws of reality, and the activities and products of human imagination, and yet imagination (and the imaginary) is our source for this kalaidescope of models which we heave at reality in a hit or miss fashion.
In a certain sense, imagination is the threshhold of Being.
Earthly Paradise is Within our Grasp
Earthly Paradise is Within our Grasp
Category: Religion and Philosophy
http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org/ftopic53.php
Suppose you were transported to a different land, and you met some doctors or counsellors in that land, and they wanted to advise you, help you.... but it happens to be close to lunch time, and suddenly the doctors and counsellors open their lunch pails, and pull out their lunch,... which to your HORROR AND AMAZEMENT, are fried and roasted human infants.....
They notice that you are shocked, and they offer you a multitude of reasons why you really shouldnt be shocked at all, that those infants felt no pain,.... that it was really more or less God's providence which had provided them or slated them for our consumption and enjoyment... that they could not be considered human since they had not reached the age of reason. Who knows what various and sundry reasons they might give you in this strange land to justify their
ghoulish eating habits.
No matter what justfications they give you, you are still horrified. It appears to you monstrous, unfeeling. From your perspective, it is THEY who are blind to the fact that their personal gratification as robbed a soul/consciousness of the right to exist, and experiences, to suffer and enjoy.
My little, hypothetical example is perhaps greatly exaggerated. But my point is that in a land , or a village, where people will not light a fire after dark, because the flame would attract an insect to its death, and that insect possess a soul which is essentially no different from a human soul, and the karmic consequences of having lite that fire, and cause that souled being to die, would negatively impact the soul of the person who lights the fire... were you such a people as the Jains, then how greatly would you value the spiritual, or psychological advice of those baby-munching physicians in that strange land. How seriously would you take them, if they told you that perhaps you were mentally ill, or that your way of life was somehow "wrong" or "inferior?"
And if you think that their notion of the insect having a soul is strange... well open your Biblical Old Testament and read about he Prophet Baalam, who had a talking donkey. The donkey was able to recognize the presence of the fearsome angel with a sword, standing to block the path of Balaam's journey. Balaam himself was blind to the angel's threat. When God grants the donkey the ability to speak, the donkey complains, "Why do you treat me so poorly, when I have
been your donkey for so many years and served you so faithfully." The angel chimes in, speaking in favor of the donkey and censures Balaam saying, "You should not treat your donkey so poorly." The bottom line of the story is simply that the donkey was ALWAYS a good donkey, and did its duty, yet BALAAM DID NOT HAVE sufficient FAITH in the faithfulness of the donkey to question or suspect that there might be a perfectly good reason why they donkey was refusing to
budge in this one instance.
Similary, BALAAM DID NOT HAVE sufficient FAITH in the faithfulness of God. Balaam did not see that there was a good reason why God did not want him to go on his journey. If we want to be REALLY clever and subtle in our observations concerning this Old Testament story of
Balaam, we will notice that Balaam says, "IF I HAD A SWORD, I would kill (the donkey)". This reveals to us that Balaam DID NOT take a sword on his journey (even though journeys were quite dangerous), out of respect for human life, lest he be tempted to take a human
life... and yet BALAAM has no respect for the donkey's life, admitting that HE WOULD kill the donkey if only he had a sword...
Of course, I am not for one minute suggesting that everyone in India, or any other country, is extremely religious, or obeservant, or vegetarian.
The religion of the great american hotdog/hamburger/capitalist culture has been quite successful in preaching its culture.
I suppose what I am saying is that in many such countries, people might welcome a pill or injection to control their diabetes, but they might not necessarily accept counselling or values of some social worker whose culture seems so brutal and barbaric.
You know, the West is so comical. We so cherish personal freedom, democracy, and liberty. We were so horrified when China instituted its "one baby" policy. And yet I often see mention made of the undeniable fact that, if China HAD NOT instituted such a policy, they would NOW be in much deeper environmental and overpopulation trouble. And it was only because they had the power of an absolute dictatorship that China could succeed in enforcing what seems like
such an inhumane law.
Ecologists and environmentalists estimate that the planet earth could comfortably support a population of ONE billion for an indefinite number of centuries.
The earth did not reach a population of one billion until around 1860, and yet by 1930, it had DOUBLED to TWO billion. And now it has skyrocketed to SIX billion. Those ads for ADM (supermarket to the world) project 20 billion by the year 2030.
Did it every occur to anyone that PARADISE, earthly paradise, IS ALREADY within the grasp of mankind?? Whatever do I mean by this strange statement?
Very simply this: If all 6 billion humans united and worked in harmony, this very moment,..... and through self-control, abstinance... whatever means (birth control, self-gratification...whatever) ... if their goal was to reduce the world population to ONE BILLION over the next 200 years... SIMPLY by limiting reproduction, THEN in a short 200 years, the
earth's population would be at a reasonable stable level from an environmental point of view.
Now what do I mean by "earthly paradise is in our grasp". I MEAN THAT, AFTER THE EARTH HAD RETURNED TO THE ONE BILLION population level, over the next 200 years, then technology, science, medicine, and a united world democracy, would make EVERYONE independently wealthy, and disease free.
It is very obvious to us , even now, that computers and robots and modern technology makes possible a level of production (food and other materials) which does not require such a work force as in previous centuries... and CERTAINLY DOES NOT require the slave labor
which was employed so many times in history.
Humanity has it totally within their power, to choose, to elect, to transform human life into a paradise of wealth for all, free of disease.
But our own selfishness and greed, and our racial and ethnic prejudices and nationalistic pride, will perhaps never allow us to co-operate with one another, and to practice the personal asceticism and self denial, to achieve such an end.
But even if humanity COULD manage to unite and discipline to create such a UTOPIAN WORLD, then what would those people do with all their free time, their leisure, their perfect health and incredible life spans extended by genetic engineering and artificial organ
transplants?
Would they write poetry and create works of art or recite prayers and debate theology?
Or would they have too much sex, drink and smoke too much, and become bored and depressed?
Authorship and Social Responsibility
Authorship and Social Responsibility
http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org/ftopic856.php
A friend of mine, from the United States, once told me an interesting account of his time spent in a monastery. There he came to know an old Russian professor, retired, a layperson, who lived at the seminary school which trained future priests. The professor was a worldly man and an intellectual, but very devout and pious, his thinking very much influenced by Russian Orthodox beliefs. One day, during Lent, the period before Easter, he was looking at an iconographic painting of the final Day of Judgment, depicting the wicked souls being cast into the torment of hell and the righteous souls being admitted to a heavenly paradise. He remarked that the day of
Judgment must certainly be most severe for authors, because although the ordinary person must answer only for personal actions and sins and transgressions, an author must take responsibility for the conduct of thousands or millions of people who are influenced by the authors writings, either for good or for evil.
Each of us is author of our own actions (or inaction) and our lives and careers are our books, whether famous, or infamous for the very few, or simply anonymous for the vast majority. Each of us must answer for our actions in some fashion or other. We pay a price for foolishness or sloth, and we are rewarded and compensated for wisdom and industry. But an author or artist is a different sort of beast from the ordinary
individual or average citizen.
We must ask ourselves two questions. First, what do we mean by social responsibility? Secondly, what is the nature and motivation of an author or artist?
In every society, government, culture, and ideology, there is a stress and emphasis upon the responsibilities of an individual to society as a whole. From the time we are small children, we are painfully aware that certain things, in fact, many things are
expected of us, and that there are consequences and a price to be paid should we fall short of those expectations. The notion of an individuals social responsibility has existed in one form or another since very ancient times, in the earliest of governments and polities, and even in the small tribes of hunters and food gatherers at the dawn of history. It is only in the past several centuries that there has arisen a notion that societies have responsibilities to individual members. We call this new found notion of societys responsibility Human Rights or Civil Rights.
Every school child in America is required to read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens). Twains novel is required reading because it is a brilliant and entertaining and, now, historic portrayal of a time of slavery and oppression in America. We now know that smoking and the use of tobacco is very damaging to the health. In Samuel Clemens day there was no notion that tobacco might be harmful. Yet, every other page of Huckleberry Finn is praising the virtues and pleasures of smoking tobacco. Many young people have been tempted to experiment with tobacco simply because it was so romanticized by Mark Twains novels. We may see this negative influence of Huckleberry Finn as an example of social irresponsibility, of
corrupting the youth. We certainly cannot lay the blame for this corrupting influence at the feet of Mark Twain. We must, if anything, blame generations of educators who have chosen to place the book among the required readings of the curriculum of very young and impressionable students without giving thought to the damaging social consequences.
If we extend our notion of authorship and social responsibility to artists, then possibly, we may see the painting Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, as a positive exercise of social responsibility, dramatizing for society the evils of violence and war. Yet, if
we study the life and works of Pablo Picasso, it becomes quite obvious that concern for social responsibility was not in the forefront of Picassos mind as a goal or concern or inspiration.
In the 1960s, Francoise Gilot, one of Picassos several ex-wives wrote Life with Picasso, and painted a picture of a very selfish, egocentric and unpredictable personality. That woman divorced Picasso and married the famous humanitarian Jonas Salk, who pioneered the development of the first polio vaccine. We may certainly see someone like Jonas Salk as a scientist committed to social responsibility in his attempt to alleviate the suffering of many. Though, perhaps it is far more accurate to observe that each author, whether of books or paintings or theories in physics and math, is driven more by a quest for the power of recognition than by some altruistic notion of social responsibility. Authors and creators are most driven by a eudaimonic inspiration or compulsion which drives them mercilessly and relentlessly towards the act of creation, and often, in that process, alienates the author from society as an eccentric rebel outcast.
What of the authorship of someone such as Albert Einstein, the author of the theory of Relativity which made possible the terrible destructive force of the atomic bomb? The ancient Greeks spoke in their myths of Pandoras Box. The name Pandora means every gift or all gifts. When Pandoras Box was opened, many terrifying things escaped which could never be put back again. In the myth, the last thing to escape was Hope.
Many physicists felt dread and guilt over the monster of destruction which they had created and unleashed.
Those who are religious and believe the Bible to be the divinely revealed word of God feel that each and every sentence is totally good and instructive. Yet, at the end of the New Testament, in the Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter 3, verse 16 we find this curious warning:
[In the Bible] are some things difficult to understand , which they that are unlearned and unstable twist and distort, unto their own destruction. So here, we see the Bible itself warning us that there are verses within it which are harmful to certain people. In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet speaks scathingly of the lying pens of the scribes. And yet it is those very scribes who copy and perpetuate the religious scriptures. Indeed, Karl Marx saw religious scriptures as an opiate of the people and therefore as something negative from the point of view of social responsibility. Conversely, the religious communities of the world see communist regimes in a negative light, believing them to oppress and censor freedom of religious expression and worship.
If one looks at popular authors and artists like Picasso, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Proust, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Thomas Dylan, and many others, one sees that they are rebels, renegades, misfits, alcoholics, recluses. We see that the worlds
of imagination which they create in their writings and art are forms of escape from reality and everyday responsibilities of a good citizen.
Now, if we search for socially responsible authors, then one might choose Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Toms Cabin. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he exclaimed, And here is the little lady who started the Civil War.
Certainly, Lincoln was exaggerating to some extent in his good natured humor, but it is certainly also true that the nation as a whole became more self-conscious about the evils of slavery after reading Uncle Toms Cabin with the cruelty of Simon LeGree, whose name became the byword of wickedness.
Another prime example of social responsibility in American literature is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which exposed the evils of company towns who exploited immigrant workers in the meat-packing industry. President Theodore Roosevelt was
sickened by the brutality and injustice which Sinclairs novel dramatized so vividly. Roosevelt immediately called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, were both signed into law on June 30th, 1906, as a direct result of Upton Sinclairs book The Jungle. President Roosevelt commended Sinclair for exposing the corruption and injustice, but scolded him for being such a socialist. Certainly, Sinclair seems to be one author deeply motivated by notions of social responsibility.
We even see, in the 20th century, authors like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, examining the state and society as some abortion gone bad, creating a nightmare world for its inhabitants. The passion of the authors creative obsession is closely analogous to the reckless abandon of sexual passion. In Orwells novel, 1984, it is a love scene of wild abandon in a secluded woods which symbolizes the rebelliousness and isolation of the individuals will to power. It is the State of Big Brother which crushes the sexual feelings of the protagonist during his imprisonment.
We easily come to see society and the state, not in their day to day reality, but in the fictional picture which is painted for us by novelists and philosophers and historians. We romanticize our notion of the state until we become like America, carrying
its holy grail of democracy and freedom to the four corners of the globe through diplomacy or force, to the willing and unwilling alike. As social activists, driven by our ideologies we become Christs running about everywhere seeking out the
largest cross, and then gathering about us a reluctant crowd of Herods.
In Genesis it is said of Abraham that he believed the promise of the divine vision, and that his very belief was counted to him as a form of righteousness or correct action, which also goes by the name of social responsibility. But by the time we come to the end of the Book of Job, God is saying to Job, Tell your friends that I am angry with them because they BELIEVED about me incorrectly. We see how ideology and theory and belief gradually supplant the individual and his daily actions and conduct in life. Finally, by the time we arrive at Jesus and his Apostles and Paul, we are told that we are utterly worthless and hopeless no matter what we do, but that there is a way to
be forgiven, if only we will embrace a certain belief. Communism and Capitalism are both jealous gods preaching their ideology to the world and offering forgiveness and shelter in return. A certain physicist once pointed out that, in a gaseous collection of molecules, each individual molecule enjoys the utmost random chaotic freedom of chance. No one may say what a given individual molecule will do at any given
moment. And yet, the mass of molecules as a whole is under strict obedience to various laws of temperature and pressure and gravity. The fiery rebel freedom of any single renegade molecule represents the force of hundreds or thousands of
molecules robbed of their vigor and spontaneity and exiled to an icy state of passivity and inaction.
Plato explored many notions of social responsibility his dialogues, most notably The Republic. Plato proposes to examine the State as a kind of microscope to view the soul
written in large letters. Plato envisioned philosopher kings in a society which saw the noble character of its citizens as its product and enterprise. Remember that Socrates was put to death for allegedly corrupting the youth through his teachings,
whether oral or written we know not.
That great German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, said that we must always act in such a way that we treat individuals as ends in themselves rather than as means to some end.
Psychiatrist John Powell wrote: "To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, not love things and use people."
http://www.meaningoflife.i12.com/psychology.htm
Gradually, over the millennia, our notion of social responsibility has evolved and shifted from the prehistoric hunters and warriors duty to his tribe, and has done a hundred and eighty degree about face. Now the great emphasis is upon societys
duty to the individual in the form of human rights or civil rights.
In light of the above considerations, I must personally conclude that the notion of social responsibility of the author is something alien and unknown to the author, imposed posthumously by a reading public. Responsibility, if it lies anywhere at all, lies in the appetites and demands of the consumer public, who clamor for an endless stream of murders, rapes, cataclysms, wars, monsters and even alien invasions from outer space. Our true responsibility is to our own inner space first. If we personally make that inner space of the heart in order, then the orderliness of society will
perhaps follow more naturally. Perhaps the real truth is that both religion and politics are the opiates of the soul, lulling it into complacency, apathy and indifference.
http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org/ftopic856.php
A friend of mine, from the United States, once told me an interesting account of his time spent in a monastery. There he came to know an old Russian professor, retired, a layperson, who lived at the seminary school which trained future priests. The professor was a worldly man and an intellectual, but very devout and pious, his thinking very much influenced by Russian Orthodox beliefs. One day, during Lent, the period before Easter, he was looking at an iconographic painting of the final Day of Judgment, depicting the wicked souls being cast into the torment of hell and the righteous souls being admitted to a heavenly paradise. He remarked that the day of
Judgment must certainly be most severe for authors, because although the ordinary person must answer only for personal actions and sins and transgressions, an author must take responsibility for the conduct of thousands or millions of people who are influenced by the authors writings, either for good or for evil.
Each of us is author of our own actions (or inaction) and our lives and careers are our books, whether famous, or infamous for the very few, or simply anonymous for the vast majority. Each of us must answer for our actions in some fashion or other. We pay a price for foolishness or sloth, and we are rewarded and compensated for wisdom and industry. But an author or artist is a different sort of beast from the ordinary
individual or average citizen.
We must ask ourselves two questions. First, what do we mean by social responsibility? Secondly, what is the nature and motivation of an author or artist?
In every society, government, culture, and ideology, there is a stress and emphasis upon the responsibilities of an individual to society as a whole. From the time we are small children, we are painfully aware that certain things, in fact, many things are
expected of us, and that there are consequences and a price to be paid should we fall short of those expectations. The notion of an individuals social responsibility has existed in one form or another since very ancient times, in the earliest of governments and polities, and even in the small tribes of hunters and food gatherers at the dawn of history. It is only in the past several centuries that there has arisen a notion that societies have responsibilities to individual members. We call this new found notion of societys responsibility Human Rights or Civil Rights.
Every school child in America is required to read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens). Twains novel is required reading because it is a brilliant and entertaining and, now, historic portrayal of a time of slavery and oppression in America. We now know that smoking and the use of tobacco is very damaging to the health. In Samuel Clemens day there was no notion that tobacco might be harmful. Yet, every other page of Huckleberry Finn is praising the virtues and pleasures of smoking tobacco. Many young people have been tempted to experiment with tobacco simply because it was so romanticized by Mark Twains novels. We may see this negative influence of Huckleberry Finn as an example of social irresponsibility, of
corrupting the youth. We certainly cannot lay the blame for this corrupting influence at the feet of Mark Twain. We must, if anything, blame generations of educators who have chosen to place the book among the required readings of the curriculum of very young and impressionable students without giving thought to the damaging social consequences.
If we extend our notion of authorship and social responsibility to artists, then possibly, we may see the painting Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, as a positive exercise of social responsibility, dramatizing for society the evils of violence and war. Yet, if
we study the life and works of Pablo Picasso, it becomes quite obvious that concern for social responsibility was not in the forefront of Picassos mind as a goal or concern or inspiration.
In the 1960s, Francoise Gilot, one of Picassos several ex-wives wrote Life with Picasso, and painted a picture of a very selfish, egocentric and unpredictable personality. That woman divorced Picasso and married the famous humanitarian Jonas Salk, who pioneered the development of the first polio vaccine. We may certainly see someone like Jonas Salk as a scientist committed to social responsibility in his attempt to alleviate the suffering of many. Though, perhaps it is far more accurate to observe that each author, whether of books or paintings or theories in physics and math, is driven more by a quest for the power of recognition than by some altruistic notion of social responsibility. Authors and creators are most driven by a eudaimonic inspiration or compulsion which drives them mercilessly and relentlessly towards the act of creation, and often, in that process, alienates the author from society as an eccentric rebel outcast.
What of the authorship of someone such as Albert Einstein, the author of the theory of Relativity which made possible the terrible destructive force of the atomic bomb? The ancient Greeks spoke in their myths of Pandoras Box. The name Pandora means every gift or all gifts. When Pandoras Box was opened, many terrifying things escaped which could never be put back again. In the myth, the last thing to escape was Hope.
Many physicists felt dread and guilt over the monster of destruction which they had created and unleashed.
Those who are religious and believe the Bible to be the divinely revealed word of God feel that each and every sentence is totally good and instructive. Yet, at the end of the New Testament, in the Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter 3, verse 16 we find this curious warning:
[In the Bible] are some things difficult to understand , which they that are unlearned and unstable twist and distort, unto their own destruction. So here, we see the Bible itself warning us that there are verses within it which are harmful to certain people. In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet speaks scathingly of the lying pens of the scribes. And yet it is those very scribes who copy and perpetuate the religious scriptures. Indeed, Karl Marx saw religious scriptures as an opiate of the people and therefore as something negative from the point of view of social responsibility. Conversely, the religious communities of the world see communist regimes in a negative light, believing them to oppress and censor freedom of religious expression and worship.
If one looks at popular authors and artists like Picasso, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Proust, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Thomas Dylan, and many others, one sees that they are rebels, renegades, misfits, alcoholics, recluses. We see that the worlds
of imagination which they create in their writings and art are forms of escape from reality and everyday responsibilities of a good citizen.
Now, if we search for socially responsible authors, then one might choose Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Toms Cabin. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he exclaimed, And here is the little lady who started the Civil War.
Certainly, Lincoln was exaggerating to some extent in his good natured humor, but it is certainly also true that the nation as a whole became more self-conscious about the evils of slavery after reading Uncle Toms Cabin with the cruelty of Simon LeGree, whose name became the byword of wickedness.
Another prime example of social responsibility in American literature is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which exposed the evils of company towns who exploited immigrant workers in the meat-packing industry. President Theodore Roosevelt was
sickened by the brutality and injustice which Sinclairs novel dramatized so vividly. Roosevelt immediately called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, were both signed into law on June 30th, 1906, as a direct result of Upton Sinclairs book The Jungle. President Roosevelt commended Sinclair for exposing the corruption and injustice, but scolded him for being such a socialist. Certainly, Sinclair seems to be one author deeply motivated by notions of social responsibility.
We even see, in the 20th century, authors like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, examining the state and society as some abortion gone bad, creating a nightmare world for its inhabitants. The passion of the authors creative obsession is closely analogous to the reckless abandon of sexual passion. In Orwells novel, 1984, it is a love scene of wild abandon in a secluded woods which symbolizes the rebelliousness and isolation of the individuals will to power. It is the State of Big Brother which crushes the sexual feelings of the protagonist during his imprisonment.
We easily come to see society and the state, not in their day to day reality, but in the fictional picture which is painted for us by novelists and philosophers and historians. We romanticize our notion of the state until we become like America, carrying
its holy grail of democracy and freedom to the four corners of the globe through diplomacy or force, to the willing and unwilling alike. As social activists, driven by our ideologies we become Christs running about everywhere seeking out the
largest cross, and then gathering about us a reluctant crowd of Herods.
In Genesis it is said of Abraham that he believed the promise of the divine vision, and that his very belief was counted to him as a form of righteousness or correct action, which also goes by the name of social responsibility. But by the time we come to the end of the Book of Job, God is saying to Job, Tell your friends that I am angry with them because they BELIEVED about me incorrectly. We see how ideology and theory and belief gradually supplant the individual and his daily actions and conduct in life. Finally, by the time we arrive at Jesus and his Apostles and Paul, we are told that we are utterly worthless and hopeless no matter what we do, but that there is a way to
be forgiven, if only we will embrace a certain belief. Communism and Capitalism are both jealous gods preaching their ideology to the world and offering forgiveness and shelter in return. A certain physicist once pointed out that, in a gaseous collection of molecules, each individual molecule enjoys the utmost random chaotic freedom of chance. No one may say what a given individual molecule will do at any given
moment. And yet, the mass of molecules as a whole is under strict obedience to various laws of temperature and pressure and gravity. The fiery rebel freedom of any single renegade molecule represents the force of hundreds or thousands of
molecules robbed of their vigor and spontaneity and exiled to an icy state of passivity and inaction.
Plato explored many notions of social responsibility his dialogues, most notably The Republic. Plato proposes to examine the State as a kind of microscope to view the soul
written in large letters. Plato envisioned philosopher kings in a society which saw the noble character of its citizens as its product and enterprise. Remember that Socrates was put to death for allegedly corrupting the youth through his teachings,
whether oral or written we know not.
That great German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, said that we must always act in such a way that we treat individuals as ends in themselves rather than as means to some end.
Psychiatrist John Powell wrote: "To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, not love things and use people."
http://www.meaningoflife.i12.com/psychology.htm
Gradually, over the millennia, our notion of social responsibility has evolved and shifted from the prehistoric hunters and warriors duty to his tribe, and has done a hundred and eighty degree about face. Now the great emphasis is upon societys
duty to the individual in the form of human rights or civil rights.
In light of the above considerations, I must personally conclude that the notion of social responsibility of the author is something alien and unknown to the author, imposed posthumously by a reading public. Responsibility, if it lies anywhere at all, lies in the appetites and demands of the consumer public, who clamor for an endless stream of murders, rapes, cataclysms, wars, monsters and even alien invasions from outer space. Our true responsibility is to our own inner space first. If we personally make that inner space of the heart in order, then the orderliness of society will
perhaps follow more naturally. Perhaps the real truth is that both religion and politics are the opiates of the soul, lulling it into complacency, apathy and indifference.
And Who Shall Liberate Freedom?
Who shall liberate freedom?
Category: Religion and Philosophy
"Free" is an adjective, as in "free lunch," which apparently does not exist, since we are always saying "There is no such thing as a free lunch." But then we turn around and sing "The best things in life are free."
Life, existence, is free, but not free like an animal in the wild. Life is a domestic beast of burden laden with many duties and responsibilities.
"Free" is the verb which Lincoln used, famed as one who "freed the
slaves," though some contend that Lincoln had other agendas far removed from the arena of civil rights.
"Free" can be as ambiguous as "love" in the phrase "love of God,"
which may mean either our love for God or that love which God expresses or represents. Consider the title of the story of a whale in captivity, "Free Willie" which may be either an attribute or a command.
Freedom is a right in modern societies, a privilege in ancient ones and a movement in era of the 1960s.
Freedom is always a responsibility and a burden, the burden that we
MUST choose. When you are not free the all your choices are made for you. In such circumstances your only freedom is your choice of the manner in which you regard your servitude, as Viktor Frankl points out.
"Free" was a social status during the time of slavery.
"Free" has a tone of censure when we speak of the "free love" and
indulgence of libertines and "loose women."
What is the difference between "freedom" and "liberty?"
Patrick Henry, famous for saying "Give me liberty or give me death," quite possibly took "liberties" with some young woman at one time or another. Liberty may be a cause or a statue. Lot was sole pillar of his community and yet Lot's wife, freed from the fate of Sodom, looked back wistfully and became imprisoned as a pillar of salt. Not every statue is a Statue of Liberty, and the pillars which support our freedom are the statutes of the laws which make society stable. Stables are where beasts of burden rest.
Who or what is truly free?
The freedom of others restricts and limits us.
Even chaos is not free but is plagued by shadow of orderliness which
haunts it as shadow haunts objects in sunlight. Consider the difficulties surrounding the METHODS to generate random numbers. They are forever doomed to be pseudo-random, never truly random, truly free.
The matter and energy, of which we are composed, are the least free
of all, bound as they are by the inexorable laws of physics.
Lawless faith is always seeking a miracle which defies the laws of nature.
In 2 Kings 20:1-11, Hezekiah had asked Isaiah,
"What will be the sign that the LORD will heal me and that I will go
up to the temple of the LORD on the third day from now?"
Isaiah answered, "This is the LORD's sign to you that the LORD will do what he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or shall it go back ten steps?"
"It is a simple matter for the shadow to go forward ten steps," said
Hezekiah. "Rather, have it go back ten steps."
Then the prophet Isaiah called upon the LORD, and the LORD made the shadow go back the ten steps it had gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.
We are free to choose our occupation and livelihood, yet often our
occupation chooses us. We are free to pursue only things which are
NECESSARY or in demand, that which is REQUIRED.
If we own a store full of merchandise, we are free to give it all away in charity, but we are not always free to charge anything we like. We may sell our hot-dogs for $5 at a baseball game, but we may not price gouge during a time of emergency and crisis, selling food or water or cab service for outrageous, exorbitant prices. Yet, who needs an umbrella when it is not raining?
Jesus, who said "I am the Truth," also said, "The truth shall make you free." Yet the most devoted Christians desire for their headstone only the title "Slave of Christ." There are some slaves who make a handsome living from their servitude.
Wherever we find freedom, we find rules and laws. Perhaps it is the very nuisance of freedom and choice and random chance which brings rules and laws into being.
Freedom has its limitations.
Freedom is a hope.
Freedom is a dream.
Freedom is an illusion.
Freedom is a word in the dictionary, a hefty, ponderous word which
enslaves the political in an arduous and exhausting exercise of lip-service.
Now that we have exhausted the possibilities of "Freedom," we may ask in closing,
"Where is that Lincoln or Jesus who shall ever liberate freedom?"
- Sitaram
8-17-2003
Erotic Images
An erotic image is simply an illusion, a gestalt of countless
colored pixels upon our senses. The individual pixels have reality
and existence. The woman in the image has no real existence. And yet
we are aroused by the woman and are not conscious of the individual
pixels. We can respond to this non-existent image because it
is an outer reflection of something which is actually within us and
which resonates with that inner woman just as the two arms of a
tuning fork resonate and produce tone.
Should some, but not all of the pixels fade, yet the image of the
woman persists. Cells in our body, and possibly even our brain, are
dying, and yet our individuality and continuity of memory persist.
Lockes and Jeffersons and Lincolns die, yet constitutional democracy
persists. Democracy, a gestalt and illusion of countless pixels of
generations of anonymous humanity which arouses in us noble feelings
of justice and inalienable human rights, persists. Stars explode in
supernova, yet the starry night sky which fills Kant with wonder and
fills Van Gogh's canvas with intoxicating imagery, persists. And
should this very planet of ours die and grow cold, extinct, is there
not something which yet persists, somewhere, elsewhere in the ever-
collapsing kaleidoscopic telescope of being and reality?
Democracy is our erotic woman, our Statue of Liberty in provocative
pose, a gestalt formed by the myriad pixels of suffering throngs of
humanity which come and go like mist and spray as waves crash upon
the rocky coast. And our libertine lady, provocatively posed, this
non-existent idea of Justice and Truth, is like Dante's Beatrice,
enticing us up a ladder of Divine Ascent, like Socrates' school
mistress Diotema and her teaching on the ladder of love in
Plato's "Symposium".
colored pixels upon our senses. The individual pixels have reality
and existence. The woman in the image has no real existence. And yet
we are aroused by the woman and are not conscious of the individual
pixels. We can respond to this non-existent image because it
is an outer reflection of something which is actually within us and
which resonates with that inner woman just as the two arms of a
tuning fork resonate and produce tone.
Should some, but not all of the pixels fade, yet the image of the
woman persists. Cells in our body, and possibly even our brain, are
dying, and yet our individuality and continuity of memory persist.
Lockes and Jeffersons and Lincolns die, yet constitutional democracy
persists. Democracy, a gestalt and illusion of countless pixels of
generations of anonymous humanity which arouses in us noble feelings
of justice and inalienable human rights, persists. Stars explode in
supernova, yet the starry night sky which fills Kant with wonder and
fills Van Gogh's canvas with intoxicating imagery, persists. And
should this very planet of ours die and grow cold, extinct, is there
not something which yet persists, somewhere, elsewhere in the ever-
collapsing kaleidoscopic telescope of being and reality?
Democracy is our erotic woman, our Statue of Liberty in provocative
pose, a gestalt formed by the myriad pixels of suffering throngs of
humanity which come and go like mist and spray as waves crash upon
the rocky coast. And our libertine lady, provocatively posed, this
non-existent idea of Justice and Truth, is like Dante's Beatrice,
enticing us up a ladder of Divine Ascent, like Socrates' school
mistress Diotema and her teaching on the ladder of love in
Plato's "Symposium".
What Is Love?
Current mood: 
Category: Romance and Relationships
Several years ago, a dear friend wrote me and asked me to speak on love.
Here is my reply:
We do not have to worry about how to tell when it is love, for Love tells us.
The touchstone of true love is a lifetime of shared commitment. Failure of this test does not mean that we have not loved or cannot love, but passage of this test is proof positive of love indeed.
Years after we had parted and gone our separate ways, I told my beloved from my college years, "as Robert Frost once said, home is where, when you go there, they have to let you in, and I know your heart is home for me, for whenever I come to you, I know that you must let me into your heart."
We need to be needed and we need to need.
We may look to many songs and poems to learn different aspects of love.
One old song says "Love is a many-splendored thing" while another says "falling in love with love is falling for make-believe".
There is even a song which says, "when I'm not near the one I love, I love the one I'm near."
"Better to have known love and lost, than to never have known love at all".
There is love of neighbor, love of country and love of God.
There are selfish and selfless forms of love. There are selfish loves which smother and destroy and there are loves which give life and meaning both for the giver and the recipient.
We see love as instinctive in infants. There is no child which does not love its caregiver, no matter how flawed or abusive they might be.
We love because we seek love in return. The love we seek is a validation of our own self-worth, that someone would care if we were not here. The essential message of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life," with Jimmy Stuart, is that the world would not be the same place had we not passed through it.
In the movie version of Brideshead Revisited (from the novel by Evelyn Waugh), Sebastian, a tragic alcoholic, has found and taken in someone even more tragic and helpless than himself. Sebastian explicitly says that anyone must be in quite a sorry state to need the likes of a Sebastian to look after them. Yet, Sebastian finds meaning and self-worth and validation in this relationship where he feels needed.
To love is to find value, worth. To be loved is to have value and worth.
Aristotle said: A friend is another 'I'
There is a love which strikes us unexpectedly, like lightening on a stormy night, like the song "some enchanted evening, you will see a stranger, across a crowded room" or the song "strangers in the night, exchanging glances, lovers at first sight".
There is a different sort of love which grows through years of shared experiences, which is the love that is possible in arranged marriages. Mohandas Gandhi and Kasturbai were married at the age of 6 and spent a lifetime together. Gandhi, in old age, wept inconsolably when his lifetime companion, Kasturbai, passed away.
We see such a love expressed in the song from "Fiddler on the Roof," "Do you love me?"
We do not choose our parents, and yet we love them. Sometimes we do not choose our life companion, and yet we grow to love them through shared experiences.
We may even learn of bizarre loves as in the movie "Kiss of the Spider Woman": A complex and universal story of friendship and love, "Kiss of the Spider Woman" explores the enforced relationship -- through imprisonment -- of two men with radically different perspectives on life. Molina is a flagrant homosexual window trimmer convicted on a morals charge and Valentin is a clandestinely-held revolutionary who has been endlessly tortured by prison authorities in a non-specific Latin American metropolis.
http://www.premiereweekend.org/films/spiderwoman.html
Definitely, love is quite necessary and required for life. An infant will die without some form of love, even if only a feigned love by some nurse caretaker. Experiments in nurseries indicate that if an infant is fed and cleaned, but never given affection, that it grows sickly and dies. I know this only from reading, and cannot personally vouch for the scientific accuracy of this observation.
Various religions speak of love. The Bible says somewhere that God is love.
The Psalms say "how blessed is it for brethern to dwell together in unity / it is like the oil running down the beard of Aaron". This passage from the Psalms speaks of the sort of love found in monasteries, which is not a sexual love. One sees an analogous love in the military between comrads-in-arms who have seen many battles together.
That love which the world spends most of its time discussing is the love which draws two people to share a life together. For the vast majority of us, that love is heterosexual love, which draws us to someone of the opposite gender, yet for a sizable minority in the world such love is for someone of the same gender.
Most of us know what it means to live with another person in one fashion or another. Most of us have lived with parents, siblings, relatives. We share the daily tasks of eating, sleeping, cleaning, working and recreation.
It is possible to live with someone without loving them and it is possible to love someone without living with them, but the highest expression and test and proof of love is your love for someone you live with daily.
In the delightful play "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder, a young man, about to marry, expresses great anxiety about what they will find to discuss each day, for the thousands of days that constitute a lifetime of marriage. Years later, that same character laughs, because what seemed a problem was never really a problem at all. There were always plenty of things to talk about.
Thornton Wilder won a Pulitzer price for the play "Our Town". It is quite possible that Thornton Wilder was gay. I have read that, after his death, it was revealed that Wilder was a homosexual, a fact he kept hidden during his life.
Karl Maria Kertbeny (or Benkert) [Hungarian] Coined the word "homosexual" in 1869.
Karl Maria Kertbeny (1824-1882)
http://www.gayhistory.com/rev2/factfiles/ffkertbeny.htm
Karl Maria Kertbeny was a Hungarian writer who is remembered today mostly for coining the term "homosexual" as a replacement for the pejorative term "pederast" that was used in the German and French speaking world of his time. Though he claimed not to be homosexual himself, Kertbeny said that his sense of justice made him cry out against sodomy prosecutions. Kertbeny argued that homosexuality is an inborn disposition, so laws like Paragraph 175 that punish it are unjust.
Kertbeny's writing career produced many books, but almost nothing of literary merit.
I mention Thornton Wilder's sexual orientation simply because so many writers, artists and philosophers have been gay and yet have written works which influence our understanding of what love is.
http://www.365gay.com/lifestylechann...l/04-april.htm
While we are on the subject of Thornton Wilder and his play, "Our Town," take a look at this excerpt from an article on AIDS and the terminally ill:
http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH...776/28839.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by regarding Our Town
...anybody who's living with a terminal or a chronic condition is forced to look at their own mortality. For a lot of people who successfully go through the adjustment process and aren't stuck in it, it's real freeing to begin to savor each moment of life, to see fully all the colors that are there, smell fully all the smells, taste all the tastes, hear all the sounds, feel all the feelings you can. It gets back to Thornton Wilder's play 'Our Town' about this girl who was part of a community but who then dies. She comes back as an invisible spirit and watches the townsfolk, her former neighbors. And she see how very little actual living the people do when they're caught up in the middle of it, how they all just kind of sleepwalk through life.
I don't think that sexual orientation makes a big difference in one's capacity to love another during a lifetime of cohabitation. There are both straight and gay couples who are successful in committed love relationships, and there are many of both orientations who are failures (and some who are chronic failures).
It is difficult to speak about love without speaking about sex. It is perhaps easier to speak about sex without love than to speak of love without sex.
It is easier to make a lover out of a friend than it is to make a friend out of a lover.
It is rare in any relationship for two people to love each other equally. There is usually one person who loves more and another who loves less. Sometimes, in life, you must make a conscious decision and commitment as to which role you wish to play.
======================================
Compare a line from e.e. cummings poem :
Quote:
your sex squeaked like a billiard-cue
chalking itself, as not to make an error,
with twist spontaneously methodical.
..... with this line from Wallace Steven's poem "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle":
Quote:
If sex were all, then every trembling hand
Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.
====================================
In the 1980s I lived and worked in New Haven, Connecticut (near Yale University)....
Japanese Sushi restaurants were beginning to gain popularity in the USA, but there was only one such restaurant in New Haven at that time.
The two restaurant owners were a somewhat portly middle-aged man of Irish ancestry (who was gay), and the chef, who was a much shorter, slender Japanese man (also middle aged). They were lovers who had lived together for many years.
I went to the restaurant often, and got to know many people well there (customers), and also the Irish owner....
Im' sure that most people perceived them as quite an unlikely couple to share life together.
One day, the Japanese chef returned to Japan for a visit. After several weeks returned to his life (and companion) in New Haven...
I had some talks with the owner (the Irishman).... about various personal things...
He told me that one day he asked his companion "Do you love me?", and the chef answered... "Love? ...
Love!... What is this talk about love?.... We are CONNECTED!"...
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