Peterson vs Hitchens. Some thoughts.

I don't usually take time to comment on a YouTube vid, but here we are:


First of all, this is NOT "Peterson vs Hitchens". For one thing, Hitchens is dead. This is a collection of clips from each of them, so as debates go, this doesn't. Neither is responding to the other. Rather, these are quotes on the same general topic, but more about that later.

The general topic is from what does an atheist derive morality? Or, can atheists be moral without God?

From here on, I'm going to assume you watched the video.

Viewing the video and reading the comments, I think it's safe to say that my impressions are quite different from many of the other commenters. When Peterson talks about morality, he's very careful to speak of archetypes and functional equivalents for religion. Hitchens' response to the base question is to state that he is offended by it. Sadly, this is a purely emotional argument, and not a rational one at all. This is deflection, not reason.

Meanwhile, Hitchens does not explain the source of his morality other than to say what it is not. He's quite sure that it's not God, but he's also quite clear that he doesn't know why he doesn't do terrible things. (at 8:36) (As an aside, it's perfectly fine to not know something and say so plainly. More people should do it.)

Peterson explains this psychologically through functional equivalence, and he takes a great deal of care in his choice of words. Regardless of what you choose to call it, there is some underlying acknowledgement that there is something of moral value that transcends purely rational choices based in self interest. Peterson is not hung up on calling it "God", preferring to set aside the cultural baggage of particular labels to focus on the psychological reality that there is something there. Hitchens does not deny that... he simply is adamant that it is not God. Hitchens addresses the psychology only briefly (at 6:00), focusing the entirety of his responses on the cultural baggage.

Both gentlemen refer to Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment is an exploration of the consequences of basing our actions on purely rational grounds... that is, using rationality itself as the only moral code. Hitchens is offended, as he contends that he isn't a rapist or a murderer despite having no religion. I do note in passing that being moral in some areas does not make one moral in general. Hitchens is quoted in A Letter to a Young Contrarian: "Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you," an inversion of the Golden Rule, which enjoins you to treat others as you would wish to be treated, not as you expect to be treated by others. The Golden rule advises you to treat others in the best possible way. Hitchens' Rule advises you to take the least beneficial action toward others consistent with what you expect to receive from them. Also among his arguments, Hitchens refers to his oft-cited "challenge" ("Name me an ethical action taken or a moral statement made by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer" (at 8:49)). This is far from unanswerable, and I have dealt with it at length elsewhere.

Meanwhile, to Peterson, those who don't act as Raskolnikov does in the novel are not truly atheists, as -- setting aside the question of what to call it -- they have some deep underlying functional equivalent for religion that provides moral grounding. This underlying function is not merely non-rational, but inexplicable using pure reason. Unfortunately, Peterson spoils it a bit by intimating there's possibly some cowardice in play that prevents atheists from using the word "religion" in reference to this inexplicable phenomenon.

Now, if you're paying close attention here, each is not addressing the other's argument. That's to be expected, as this is a collection of clips. Quite frankly, I believe that if they were in the same room, then Hitchens' offense would be waved aside by Peterson, and that Hitchens would actually not disagree with Peterson's argument re: an underlying functional equivalent. Hitchens himself states that he doesn't know why he acts in accordance with morality, even when acting immorally would be in his self interest, even when he wouldn't get caught. This is evident when he argues that he acts without fear of retribution and without expectation of reward.

Here's where Hitchens spoils it a bit, though, by mis-characterizing Judeo-Christian belief on that matter, implying that fear and reward are the guiding forces there. In fact, most Christians are adamant that works buy you nothing. To a devout Christian, there's nothing you can do to earn your way into Heaven. Rather, that is a gift of grace: works are the sign of belief, not a cover charge for entry. Devout Jews act out of a deep-seated sense of obligation. To do a mitzvah because you are obliged to do it is more noble to Jewish sensibilities than to do the exact same deed because you want to.

By the way, when Hitchens speaks of his Jewish ancestors making it all the way to Sinai without knowing that rape and pillage are wrong, this is a mis-statement of morality as depicted in near-Eastern religious tradition, which -- fairly presented -- depicts Noahide laws existent prior to the covenant on Sinai. These are simply the things that we would expect of all decent human beings, regardless of religion. Among them are the establishment of courts of justice. Since those among the audience who are religious know their own beliefs and can recognize the straw man, the statement undermines his case.

Generally, I don't think that Hitchens makes a particularly strong case unless you walk into the argument predisposed to believing that. That could be an artifact of the editor having picked those particular quotes rather than more cogent arguments Hitchens could have -- and probably would have -- made. I'm fairly certain that were these gentlemen actually talking in the same room at the same time, Hitchens' "offense" wouldn't last a minute. With that in mind, I'm a bit disappointed with the editing. I'm sure that Hitchens had much better arguments that the editor could have used. I'm dismayed that the editor didn't ferret them out and use them instead. Hitchens was no idiot. He would never have repeated invitations to speak if his core rebuttal was to whine about how offended he was. Nevertheless, that's the impression that the editor gives us here. This is a shame, as finding something offensive is the weakest possible argument in any rational discourse. Being offended by someone else's logic doesn't invalidate the logic. It's a non-response. It's also a non-response that I don't think Hitchens himself would use in direct discourse with Peterson. As Peterson is arguing as a psychologist rather than a Christian, Hitchens would find that Peterson's arguments are very different from those of the Christians that Hitchens is used to debating, and would necessarily respond with better, more rational arguments. It would be a very different conversation than what we see here.

I also suspect that those YouTube commenters who think Peterson is waffling just aren't listening very closely to what he's actually saying. They think he's talking about "God" when in fact he's talking about something (for which, to him, the label is not important) that is not consistent with pure rationally derived self-interest. Giving it another label doesn't make it go away. Being offended by someone else's label doesn't make the thing being labeled go away, either. In short, this video presents an "debate" over language that mostly ignores the key concept.

The Sculptor

Imagine that you're a sculptor. You're working in marble, and it's your desire to create a beautiful statue made of marble. To that end, you have a large, unformed block of the stone in front of you.

Some of the stone is fractured. There are faults. But much of it is solid and sound. As an experienced sculptor, you recognize the flaws, plan your work, and begin on a project that is as much about destruction as it is creation.

Consider this: with each tap of your hammer, with each mark of your chisel you destroy, you remove, you damage some of the stone. It lies there on the floor to be swept away. As the project continues, you soon have excised more stone than remain in the sculpture itself. Even stone that is good and sound may not be part of the final design, and is chipped away.

At the end of this process you have the beautiful statue that you envisioned. But the entirety of the process aside from its conception... every bit of it... consisted of a systematic and planned destruction of portions of the stone before you.

Clearly, in this case, destruction isn't bad. It's a necessary part of achieving something very good.

Keep in mind, too, that at any time you could have raised your hammer in anger and frustration. You could have smashed the entire work with a sledgehammer. You could even have refrained from touching any of the sound stone, chipping away only the flawed portions. You could have sculpted it in a different way. No one denies your power to do it.

Yet, despite your power to act in that way, if you did you would not in the end have the beautiful statue of which you conceived. The fact that you did not destroy the statue does not in any way reflect on your power to do so.

--==//oOo\\==--

People often ask why bad things happen to good people, and why an omnipotent God allows evil to exist. God doesn't allow it... as Isaiah said, "I am the LORD, and there is none else.  I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil.  I am the LORD, that does all these things" (Isaiah 45,6-7).

The statue of David by Michaelangelo.
Follow this link to Britannica
to read how this exquisite work of art was extracted
from stone that expert opinion has judged 'mediocre quality'

In Defense of Books

As I write this, I am literally surrounded by books. Yesterday, a millennial (and one of my own children!) announced to me that he had probably read his last book. There are so many media forms proliferating, he told me, that he was making a conscious effort to focus on the new rather than those that were on their way out.

The thing is, though, that books are not on their way out. Sure, the codex might be superceded. But the codex is simply a form of delivery. A codex is what we think of as a physical book... multiple pages bound on one side, that can be flipped through. But before that, books were delivered on scrolls. Before that, they were impressed into clay, or carved into stone. Today, they're delivered electronically. And we still read the books that were previously delivered on scroll, or clay, or stone. The form of delivery is not what makes a book. So here are just a few thoughts on why books themselves are not, nor will they become, obsolete.

1. Books are slow and deliberate in their creation. They deliver the distilled, deliberate thoughts of their authors. No other medium can match this -- not film, not a blog post, not a podcast, not a lecture, and certainly not any of the phone-friendly byte-sized forums.

2. Books are personal. They're usually not written by committee, and when they are, it's a small collaboration. Through a book you can peer inside another human brain.

3. Books endure. When you're reading the "The Gallic Wars", it is Julius Caesar himself who is speaking to you. No one else. It matters not whether the words themselves are written on a parchment or vellum scroll, a codex, or an ebook. The book itself is a form of expression that transcends its medium.

4. Books use language to its fullest. Books use descriptive language without crutches. The visuals and emotions are those that they impart through language alone. Because of this, a great author MUST tap into the universalities of human emotion and experience in a way that no filmmaker can begin to match.

5. Books take time to read. They are to be savored, not devoured. We dwell in them. There's no set length. There's nothing that flies by to be missed. This is time employed by the reader to build the world that is given in blueprint form by the author, and the reader related because he is invested in that creation. In itself, reading a book is a skill far more advanced than the mere interpretation of the printed words. It is an active engagement of the mind and imagination of the reader. And yet, it's not a difficult skill.

6. When an author elicits emotion from the reader, it is a deliberate act. It's not the instinctive response of an animal to the purity of a tone or a particular facial expression. It is a difficult and subtle craft to -- through words alone -- coax the reader into a particular frame of mind and Make. Him. Feel. It is this deliberate impartation of emotion that raises the craft of an author to Art.

7. Books -- particularly classic books -- are honest. They depict what is, as understood by the author. They need not check boxes for political expediency. As such, books are intellectually dangerous. This is why books are the first expressions of speech to be banned by those demagogues and manipulators who are vulnerable to the truth. Those things that are MOST dangerous to tyrants are the very same things that are MOST necessary to maintain our liberty. This is why it is the freedom of the press, and not that of guns, that is avowed in the First Amendment.

Spirituality in Science

The chances are, if you're a human being, when you say the word spirituality you mean something completely different from what I mean when I say it... even after we've consulted a dictionary.

Though I consider myself to be religious, when I use words like spirit or soul or consciousness in a metaphysical sense (collectively, mind-body duality), I do so with full acknowledgement that I have no idea whatsoever what those words really mean. And the more I talk with people who think they know what these words mean, the more I'm convinced that they have no idea either. And yet they're all over the place.

When the words are used, they typically describe some incorporeal, non-physical beingness. We suppose that this beingness exists apart from the body, and is yet tied to the body. And though we have perfectly good meat-computers in our heads, it is this beingness that we imagine controls our actions and thoughts, through some undefined manipulation of these meat-computers (brains).

None of this explains what a soul is, or how it interacts with a brain, or why we suppose it to be indestructible. It doesn't explain why we imagine it to be something we can give away -- or that some devil can collect -- while continuing to go about our lives. And given the fact that our thoughts and memories can be affected by chemicals, or physical trauma, or surgery, or genetics or disease; it doesn't explain why we suppose it to live on after our deaths to face punishment or reward or recycling or merging with some grander consciousness, depending on your religion. It doesn't explain why the concept of mind-body duality is accepted without question by people who believe themselves to be atheists, yet write fiction involving body-swapping and possession and mind-reading at a distance and astral projection and transcendental evolution. I don't think even the Pope could adequately explain it without saying it's a matter of faith. And honestly, I think that's a pretty good answer.

It's generally agreed that this is not a scientific concept. That doesn't mean it can't be true; but it means that we've agreed (most of us, anyway) that there's no way of testing it scientifically. And for the following discussion, I'm going to put my scientist hat on.

Basically, if you took all of the verified scientific evidence of the existence of mind-body duality, wrote it all out on 20# paper stock, and put it on a scale, it would weigh nothing whatsoever. Empty scale. On the other hand, you could fill a library with the "factual" statements of conviction that have been written on the subject. (Don't get excited. The same thing's true of much of theoretical physics.)

Here's an example: Supernatural Magazine. I've linked you to an article on consciousness and parallel universes. Notice all of the declarative statements. Nary a doubt. Notice all the scientific jargon, like "vibrational rates", which mean absolutely nothing outside of this word salad. Notice phrases like "Science says," when Science does no such thing. Some scientists may say something to the effect, but you have to be very careful to understand the context of any theoretical discussion among scientists. That is, the scientists all know and understand the discussion to be theoretical. In other words, every word of every discussion is understood to be descriptive of models built from hypotheses and suppositions accepted for the purpose of discourse to then ask the question, "What if? If all of these things we're talking about were true, then what would we expect to see?" And then they go off to experiment and measure and observe and tell you whether they see those expected things. And if they don't, then they dream up something new. And though for the sake of their human egos and funding and pride, most theoreticians like us to assign a little more gravitas to their gravity; at it's core, that's what science is. The folks at Supernatural Magazine don't seem to understand that. Instead, they take these models as solid fact and present them as such. The end result is a meaningless, garbled mess. They confuse parallel universes with multiple dimensions and get basically everything wrong.

Sometimes scientists themselves get tied up in knots in a similar fashion over this subject as well as similar nebulous terms such as free will. I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that we really have no idea what free will is, or how we would recognize it if we saw it. I think it's fair to say that as far as we know, the Universe is deterministic, even if it is unpredictable at the scales of the very small. (I think probability more accurately describes the state of our knowledge than the state of the event. Thought experiment: flip a coin and call it in the air. What is the chance that it lands heads-up? 50%? Now flip the same coin, catch it in the air and cover it. What is the chance now? Now flip it, catch it, cover it, and peek. Then ask someone else to tell you the odds. Do the two of you agree?) How is it possible to have free will in a deterministic universe? For that we need to know what free will is, and that's tied in with consciousness, and we don't even know what consciousness is. That's just being honest.

I think it's highly unlikely that we could ever actually solve problems like this about the physical universe. We cannot prove the self-consistency of a system from within the system itself (Gödel's incompleteness theorems). And sadly, we are intrinsically part of the Universe we're trying to explain, and we're using the brains that we're trying to explain. So I think that "we don't know" is a very rational response to our questions about the most fundamental nature of reality and of ourselves.

--==//oOo\\==--

That doesn't stop people from trying, of course. I recently came across a 2014 article in ScienceDirect by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose entitled, "Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory". "Orch OR" stands for "orchestrated objective reduction". I'm not going into a detailed summary, as the article is exactly that, and you can read the article and commentary yourself. And as you do, note the inherent differences between this article and the previously-linked one from Supernatural Magazine. In ScienceDirect, phrases like "we may speculate" and "we believe" abound. In criticizing the article, I make no comment on the discussion of neurochemistry. I'll take their word for it as I don't study that. But I do have some issues with their logic.

Of course, Orch OR invokes quantum events as an outside causal agency for the action of free will. Hameroff and Penrose conclude that "consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe." The problem I have with it is that with all of the mental gymnastics employed in the article, there's no way that the premises or the arguments definitively support the conclusion.

Let's strip it down. At the start of the article they declare: "what consciousness actually is remains unknown". Well, that much is true. And in their conclusion they state, "Such OR events would have to be ‘orchestrated’ in an appropriate way (Orch OR), for genuine consciousness to arise." See the problem? They don't know what "genuine consciousness" is. They therefore have no basis for stating its required conditions.

Yes, they do lay out some conditions that they may believe are descriptive of consciousness. But these are self-admittedly subjective. That we feel as if we have free will does not mean that free will is a property of "genuine consciousness". Should we encounter a provably deterministic consciousness that reports that it feels as if it has free will, it would meet the conditions at least as well as we do. Typically, some form of randomization is usually invoked in discussions of free will, but it doesn't follow that a randomized system is non-deterministic; merely that the trigger for the action is unknown. And once triggered, the system itself is still deterministic. "Free will" of itself does not even imply randomization... quite the opposite. "Free will" implies deliberation and volition, not random action. And if a wave-function requires consciousness to collapse, and consciousness has free will, why can't Schrödinger simply will his cat to live?

Such difficulties are why I now like to avoid the term "free will" entirely, and instead focus on "self-determination". It doesn't matter whether I have free will or not. As your brain is equipped no differently, you have no inherent authority regarding my decisions. It works for me on every level, including the religious, the philosophical and the political.

To be fair, Penrose is quite explicit that when he's talking about non-computability, he doesn't mean randomness. But I'm not sure he makes his case. Randomness is pretty much how the transition from quantum to classical physics expresses itself in our present understanding. Penrose proposes that some new model of physics is required. Unfortunately, this would appear to require processes that take place below the threshold of possible experimentation.

But this does nothing to define or explain what is meant (if anything) by employed terms such as proto-consciousness. Really... what the hell is that? I intuitively think that OR -- objective reduction -- as a "real thing" must exist in some form, otherwise we have a very hard time explaining the reality of events, the effects of which we observe long after their occurrence in the far reaches of the Universe. I think it's pretty nonsensical to seriously posit whether things exist that we haven't experienced. But is it necessary to invoke consciousness to explain the reduction of those events? Is it not enough to allow that interactions count as observations? Is it not enough to allow that quantum events, although they may provide random input, thus influencing our computation, do not necessarily imply a consciousness separate from ourselves? Is it necessary to discard the notion that our brains are sufficiently complex to perceive themselves as "conscious" without first disproving it?

Now, all of that is said with my scientist hat on. When I take that hat off, there's something extremely familiar about the notion of some pervasive objective consciousness collapsing the wave-functions of the Universe, resulting in a deterministic world which we inhabit while exhibiting free will made possible by partaking of the essence of that proto-consciousness. It certainly seems to be a restatement of things I accept on faith, dressed up with a bit of math. It's called Religion. And yet, Penrose describes himself as an atheist. Maybe that's a wave-function he should concentrate on reducing.

--==//oOo\\==--

UPDATE: One other thing that I'd like to address is that the article mentions the following:

Measurable brain activity correlated with a conscious perception of a stimulus generally occurs several hundred milliseconds after that stimulus. Yet in activities ranging from rapid conversation to competitive athletics, we respond to a stimulus (seemingly consciously) before the above activity that would be correlated with that stimulus occurs in the brain. This is interpreted in conventional neuroscience and philosophy [1–3] to imply that in such cases we respond non-consciously, on auto-pilot, and subsequently have only an illusion of conscious response. The mainstream view is that consciousness is epiphenomenal illusion, occurring after-the-fact as a false impression of conscious control of behavior. Accordingly, we are merely ‘helpless spectators’

Hameroff and Penrose offer quantum processes in the brain as "loopholes" for such implementations. I wonder if that's even necessary, as I have doubts as to whether the mainstream view is even correct.

Here's an analogy from my own field of computer programming. Granted, programs are automata (even as we might be) so I'm going to anthropomorphize a bit and use a simple example, but it's for the purpose of illustration.

Let's take a program like Chess. There are basically three things going on here: You have a user interface (UI). That's what communicates with the outside world in some meaningful way, by taking input from the keyboard and mouse and drawing graphics. The UI may have other functions, such as being 'aware' of the rules of the game and checking the legality of the player's moves. It may remember previous positions. Then there's the chess engine, which has very limited UI, mainly intended to communicate with the UI. And then there's a library of set responses to known chess positions. Together, they comprise the chess program.

Now, you might think of the library as 'instinct' or 'reflex' or 'muscle memory'. It's not very interesting here, in that no 'thought' is involved in the responses. So long as it receives input that's 'in the book', it responds automatically.

Positions that are not 'in the book' are evaluated by the chess engine. Once that's done it distills all of that analysis into a single response (the move) and sends it back to the UI.

The library is much faster than the computations performed by the engine. And to improve performance, we need not wait for the library to report failure before working on the problem. The engine 'thinks' about the problem even as the library is being searched. But the library responds first, even though we know we 'consciously' set to work evaluating the position. And if the library responds negatively, then we've constructively used the time. In any event, it takes some finite amount of time to integrate the results and report them to the UI.

Keep in mind that the UI is fairly superficial. And if we look at what's going on in the internals of the machine, the program has generated a response and taken action to update its internal 'board' before the UI is 'aware' of the decision and can communicate it to the user. Other programs do similar things with procedural calls to back-end processes that perform actions before they can be reported. For instance, I've designed a system for mortgage insurance that submits applications to multiple decision engines and returns "first response" underwriting decisions.

If our understanding of the 'program' were limited to the superficial layers that communicate with us, then we might conclude that the program were acting 'unconsciously'.

I think the same is likely to be true of biological consciousness. It's not that any part of this happens 'unconsciously'. Rather, it's that consciousness is more complicated than is thought of in the mainstream view. I think it doesn't all happen at once, monolithically, and it's not a step-by-step linear process as it might be in a very simple program. Rather, I surmise that we frame a choice and set the various parts of our mind to work on it, integrating the results and reporting them. To say that something is 'unconscious' when it is part of the conscious process is to mis-label it. And this goes back to the earlier assertion that we don't really know what consciousness is... so we run the risk of excluding necessary functions from that definition and erroneously saying that it's not conscious at all...  we are merely ‘helpless spectators’ experiencing an 'illusion'. We look at functional design and conclude that it's a paradox. Such an interpretation is not necessarily warranted.

Temporary Insanity

In my last post I wrote about love, and I described it as "the condition by which we care for others more than we care for ourselves." I stand behind that 100%. Unfortunately many people these days confuse love with what I (and many others) call "lurve"... as in "... but we're in lurrrrrve."

Lurve is merely romantic infatuation. It has very little to do with Love. Unlike love, lurve is all about you. Talk to someone one who is "in lurve"...

• "She makes me feel so..."
• "I feel..."
• "My heart..."

Lurve is all about me, me, me. It's not love at all. And it's worse than that. People "in lurve" do not make clear decisions. Even Shakespeare knew it: read Romeo and Juliet. People "in lurve" are self-destructive, not because they are caring for someone else, but because of the way the self-destruction makes them feel. It is an insidious, twisted parody of love. It leaves people behaving in this sort of ridiculous fashion so aptly illustrated by Bruno Mars:

[excerpt] 

I'd catch a grenade for ya 

Throw my hand on a blade for ya 

I'd jump in front of a train for ya 

You know I'd do anything for ya 

I would go through all this pain

Take a bullet straight through my brain 

Yes, I would die for you, baby 

But you won't do the same

Note that none of this is to actually defend or care for someone, but purely because it's asked... or worse, simply thrown at the object of infatuation; whereas a clear-headed person knows that love is long-term, and that to care for someone else you must first be equipped and prepared to do so.

I offer that lurve is nothing less than bona-fide temporary insanity.

It is temporary in that it always wears off. And when it does, it often leaves the people so stricken with the realization that they don't even like the person that they would have "died for". Sometimes (as in the song) they know this even as they're still "in lurve". That lurve is temporary is why the present divorce rate in America is 50%.  Put another way, as many as 50% of American marriages have not ended in divorce yet.

Our ancestors knew that this infatuation we now casually call lurve was divorced from common sense. A person could not be trusted to look after his or her own best interests when under its influence. Until well into the 20th century it was still social norm for a man to ask a woman's parents for permission to marry. And it was the social norm for them to reject layabouts, louts, and otherwise unsuitable suitors. The parents were the gatekeepers who kept their daughter's interests in mind, even when their daughter's mind was temporarily incapacitated by luuuurve.

And it worked. Marriages lasted, and divorce was the exception, not the rule.

--==--

In some places, this is still the norm. Today I related a story to my wife. As an IT consultant, a very large percentage of the people I have worked with over the last twenty years have been from India. A few years ago, one of my co-workers (for convenience I'll call him by the pseudonym of "Sandeep") told me he was returning to India. I asked him if his work visa had expired.

"No," he replied. "I'm getting married!"

I told him I thought that was wonderful, and asked him what his fiancée was like. Sandeep responded that he didn't know... he had never met her. His parents had arranged the marriage.

--==--

At this point in the story, my wife looked aghast. "You mean to tell me he didn't even know what she looked like, or whether he would like her or not?" She told me that she couldn't imagine having to "submit" to a "forced" marriage. I asked her what she thought about that, and she said she didn't think much of it. I bet her that she would change her mind when I finished the story...

--==--

Sandeep was born in a culture that reveres their elders for their wisdom and life experience. He loves his parents very much, and he knows that no matter how old he gets, they will love him intensely. He trusts that they would always look after his best interests, and do their very best for him. He knew that in choosing a wife for him, his parents would make the best choice they possibly could, using all of their experience and hopes for his future and that of all of their grandchildren.

I saw Sandeep's face. I heard his voice. He did not reluctantly return in fear and trepidation at being "forced" into an arranged marriage. Rather, he looked forward with excitement and anticipation at the prospect of meeting for himself the perfect woman that his parents had chosen especially for him... the very same excitement and anticipation felt by expecting parents toward a baby who has not yet even been born.

Whether a newborn is thin, fat, ugly, or has all of his fingers and toes has nothing to do with a parent's love; it doesn't depend on anything so superficial. So it was with Sandeep and the perfect wife he had not yet seen.

--==--

My wife stared at me for a full thirty seconds, slack-jawed. I could tell she was thinking of our own children.

"I never thought of it that way. I understand it now. It's different. But it's beautiful."

Yeah. It is.

Love and Hate

Many people believe that the opposite of Love is Hate. I don't think it is. The true opposite of Love is nothing at all. If you have ever felt the empty, bland not-caringness of ceasing to love someone without hating them, you have some idea of the truth of this. Where there is both Love and Hate, when the Love is gone, then Hate is exposed, naked. For this reason, people believe them to be opposites.

Hate stems from the perception of being hurt or wronged. Hate, properly applied, has a positive purpose. Consider this passage from C.S. Lewis' Perelandra, in which Professor Ransom is wrestling with the Un-Man:

What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a Person: but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation. It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for.

Why would an almighty God allow such a thing as hatred...? Because it has exquisite, necessary utility. Love is the condition by which we care for others more than we care for ourselves. Unalloyed Love leads us to allow evil without opposition. We become the unwitting tools of evil. We become enablers. Hate, properly applied, motivates us to combat evil. In the presence of Love, Hate gives us the strength to act where we might otherwise consider only our own survival. It keeps us from being cowards.

Hate becomes a problem in the absence of Love.

Without Love... putting others first... we make ourselves the center of everything. Every matter of ethics and morality becomes relative and subjective. We focus only on the offense that we take, without considering whether offense was given. Thus, we are offended by everything and we hate freely. And because admitting to our hatred would damage our self-image, we cannot bring ourselves to do that. Instead, we justify our selfishness using the language of emotions we do not truly feel. Not necessarily toward everyone... but certainly toward those who don't bolster our self-image... those who are not useful to us.

Look around. Look inside. Judge for yourself.

---

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

--Ecclesiastes 3:1

Why you shouldn't raise kids.

I saw this meme on Facebook. It was shared from an education website called Clever Classroom.

The promise I have with it is that its premise is skewed, and I think that if they paid closer attention to current events over the last fifty years or so it would be obvious. Unfortunately, our current crop of teachers were raised in the system that skews our children.

For the record, it's going in the opposite direction of that indicated.

In this society we have "children" who live at home well past their 30s.[1] We increasingly raise the drinking age. We encourage the abandonment of responsibility for our actions, replacing it with blame.[2] We have built a nanny state to take care of not just those who are in legitimate need; but adults who are capable of taking care of not only themselves, but each other and their own children. Speaking of which, we usurp their authority as parents and introduce thoughtless standards of State-imposed conformity upon them. And as we stifle dissenting thought and alternative approaches, we recite Newspeak mantras of individuality and creativity.

Development doesn't work the way of this meme... do you wait to get into the water until you can swim? Of course not. It's plainly ridiculous. You get into the water in order to learn. Do you wait until you know how to play a musical instrument before you place your fingers upon it? Of course not. Predictably, it is practice that leads to proficiency, and the lack of the first results in the lack of the second.

Psychologists now claim not only that adulthood begins at age 25, but that it is because they don't exercise the responsibilities of adulthood earlier. Who could have predicted that? Well... anybody, really. It's obvious.

I have mentioned this before in regard to the subject of death. Question: Why do we have pets? Answer: because they die. And those little deaths and losses prepare us for the vastly more traumatic experience of losing our parents and discovering that we are wholly self-reliant individuals. Sadly, there are now individuals raised under the theory of "let them develop naturally", who will never reach adulthood. What the "let them develop naturally" school of thought does not comprehend is that environment shapes a being's development, and that the role of a guiding, motivating parent is part of the natural environment in which we should expect a human being to be raised. It's our job as parents to place upon them responsibilities -- chores, homework, etc. --  so that they may exercise judgment and discipline and problem-solving and become competent to apply these skills more generally.

We have one task as parents, and that's to see that our progeny can carry on without us. And I'm sad to say that this meme isn't going to equip anyone to do that one task.

I don't want to raise competent and compassionate kids... in the end, if that's all I have, then the job is unfinished. There is a reason they call it "raised"... as in raised up from where they begin. Instead I want to raise them to be competent and compassionate adults at the proper moment of life.

---

[1] overwhelmingly, this is blamed on economic factors. This is less a lie than an inability to comprehend the actual factors. There is a surplus of jobs in America; that's why we have so many immigrants. Americans are erroneously taught by those who sell higher education that higher education will necessarily qualify them for executive positions, ignoring that education does not negate the principle of supply and demand, nor does it negate the superior value of experience. As a result they do nothing at all and fallaciously claim that there are "no jobs". What is at play here is the unwillingness of Americans to accept entry-level employment for themselves.

[2] see footnote [1] for an example where employers and "the economy" are blamed for the individual's refusal to get off his butt and get an entry-level job.

Nome, IDIC, and the Future That Could Still Be

In my last post I outed myself as a longtime Trekkie, something that's no secret to any of my close friends. In fact, the Star Trek original series (ST:TOS) has guided quite a lot of my life. It's the reason I work in technology... I want a hand, however slight, in bringing that sort of world about. And in this post I'm assuming you know quite a bit about the series, but I'll go back through it and add hyperlinks for those who haven't caught up. BTW, all of the referenced episodes are available on Hulu.com.

And I'm sticking with the original series because the Next Generation and its successors had very little to do with the ideals of the Star Trek of the 1960s, but I'll invite you to read this explanation of that.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm blind to certain illogicalities and shortcomings of the scripts. But those who criticize these often forget that, for all its social commentary and forward thinking, it was still a product of its time, as well as the product of a limited budget. So for every 'Amok Time' or 'Journey to Babel' you're bound to have a 'Spock's Brain' or 'Turnabout Intruder'. And sometimes, it's deliberate. In order to comment on a thing, you have to portray that thing. And they didn't always hit it.

But one of the things that was done right was the Vulcan philosophy of Nome, meaning "All", symbolized by the stylized triangle-in-a-circle called the IDIC. Infinite Diversity, Infinite Combinations. Despite the fact that Gene Roddenberry did want to introduce an item as something to sell through his mail-order business, there is a well-thought-out philosophy behind it.

The IDIC as it appeared on Spock's dress uniform

The IDIC was introduced in the 3rd season episode, 'Is There in Truth No Beauty?', and it is the concept more than the design that is worth noting. The infinite combinations found in the universe being more valuable than the sum of their individual parts.

Later, in 'The Savage Curtain', we're treated to this dialogue between the crew of the Enterprise and a faux "Abraham Lincoln":

Uhura: Excuse me, Captain Kirk
Kirk: Yes, Lieutenant?
Uhura: Mr. Scott...
Lincoln [interrupting]: What a charming negress. Oh. Forgive me, my dear. I know that in my time some used that term as a description of property.
Uhura: But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we've learned not to fear words.
Kirk: May I present our communications officer, Lt. Uhura.
Lincoln: The foolishness of my century had me apologizing where no offense was given.
Kirk: We've each learned to be delighted with what we are. The Vulcans learned that centuries before we did.
Spock: It is basic to the Vulcan philosophy, sir. The combination of a number of things to make existence worthwhile.

Uhura meets Lincoln

There are so very many things to like in that exchange; chief among them, Uhura's perfectly frank and innocent explanation that "in our century we've learned not to fear words". I wish that subsequent generations had even an infinitesimal fraction of the wisdom behind that statement. Keep in mind that this was filmed in the midst of the civil rights movement, by people who believed in it vehemently, and it portrays a deliberate statement of their ideals for a utopian future... in which words have lost their negative connotations as people embrace their diversity and take ownership of their lives and future.

Got that?

A Vulcan "kiss"
It's one-half of the salute.
Surak's Construct explains

But it was fandom that really ran with the idea. An entire subculture of fan fiction sprang up to explore the concepts. One such exploration is Jacqueline Lichtenberg's monograph "Surak's Construct". I introduce it here because it is chronologically very close to the source material and very accurately reflects the expectations for the future that were held at that time. From a few sparse symbols depicted in the show -- the IDIC, the Vulcan salute, the Vulcan "kiss", and identification of "the philosophy of 'Nome', meaning 'all'" -- Lichtenberg deduces a robust history and philosophy of the Vulcan culture, and explored it in an "alternate universe" of fan fiction called Kraith.

If you read "Surak's Construct", you see that Lichtenberg basically nailed it. This is perfectly consistent with the original series, which offers Vulcan society as a utopian Way. This Way is one that is, in the words of Spock's mother Amanda in 'Amok Time', "Better than ours". As we progress in the series we learn that far from being "unemotional", Vulcans are very deeply emotional. But they reserve their emotions for those things that matter. I dare you to watch 'Journey to Babel' and conclude that Sarek does not love Amanda. I double dare you.

The concepts are simple and clear:

• Respect logic. That is, employ reason, as passion has no regard for consequences. But understand passion, so that reason doesn't result in oppression. When reason is employed, use it well, without fallacy. When passion is employed, use it constructively.
• Respect life. It is not possible to demand respect for your own life if you are not willing to reciprocate. Your life has only the value you place upon others. 
• Respect commonality. "All". Recognize yourself in others. People are fundamentally similar. What you think of yourself is true of almost everyone. One of the themes of Star Trek is the utter sameness of our needs, masked by our apparent differences. Even something as totally alien as a Horta was found to share our basic values. The upshot is that if you search yourself with complete honesty, you already know what those values are. You should learn to recognize those points of commonality and value them without demanding complete accord. Furthermore, what we expect of others is largely a projection of what we think of ourselves. Thus, "there is no honor among thieves." You may never learn more about yourself than when you realize that your expectations of strangers tell you nothing about them and everything about you. 
• Respect individuality. Love yourself. In so doing, treasure your privacy, and spend your emotional capital on that which does not destroy and denigrate. Do not take offense lightly; for to do so is to deny that the views of others have value, and in so doing validate that others are justified in holding your views in similar low regard.
• Respect diversity. Love others as you love yourself. In so doing, allow them their unique opinions, especially when they are in opposition to your own. It is not only easy, but meaningless to be "tolerant" of people who are only superficially different from you; the only true test of tolerance is for those with whom you deeply disagree. Allow others their dignity, so that you may require the same from them. Do not take offense lightly, as this is a license to cause offense just as easily. 

Where Kirk offers a counter-balance of Human emotionality, it must balance these basic principles. You have to have some pretty damned good reason for violating the Prime Directive... not liking a culture just doesn't cut it. And in 'The City at the Edge of Forever', to preserve history Edith Keeler had to die. Sometimes love doesn't conquer all. Sometimes love must be sacrificed. But you'll see in the original series that Vulcans make valuable advisors and poor leaders. When Spock is in a position of command by himself, he is not so effective as his Captain. Kirk brings with him a moral objectivism and certainty that is largely lacking from the Vulcan's philosophy. Spock's philosophy is relativistic, and renders him inactive. While he and Kirk would likely not disagree on any particular point of the IDIC, Kirk's own philosophy (should he ever utter it) raises respect for individual liberty above all other points. For Kirk, the needs of the many do not outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.

And while Vulcans are an ancient race with much experience, it is Humans who built and maintain the Federation. The Vulcans contribute an ideal; Humanity makes it work.

--==//FREE SPEECH ZONE\\==--

Now think of how badly our present society mishandles these concepts. And yes, this is about to get political, because like it or not, while being non-partisan, Star Trek has always been political. It has always been a commentary on the human condition. I would be shirking a duty if I didn't point out the very real historical and current problems that this philosophy of Nome addresses.

It was created in the 1960s: a time when laws were imposed upon people to segregate them and degrade them. In that time IDIC was offered as a pretty straightforward message that we can acknowledge and embrace the differences of others without erasing those differences. We can discard the bad and choose the good, and that -- significantly -- as this is a philosophy, not a law, it can be done individually, by acceptance. In the real world the path to acceptance has been slow. But parallel to that, attempts were made to impose acceptance. We instituted more laws to correct the bad laws, and are now seeing the limits of those laws, which unavoidably preserve and extend those same divisions while creating entirely new problems.

An actual "Free Speech Zone"

Today, people have not only learned to fear words, but our universities deliberately pander to and promote such fears. They sift innocent actions in search of new fears, and label them "microagressions". They actively train people to search for and take offense at these innocent actions while simultaneously claiming that they are better qualified than you to expound on what heinous insult you really meant by a polite act. They issue trigger warnings so you know when to be fearful. They provide safe spaces in which you can fear and engage in retaliatory hate from afar. They designate free speech zone ghettos where students must go to express opinions that should properly be expressed and discussed intelligently in classrooms; so that other students do not have to exercise the tolerance that is a duty of citizenship. They foment division by celebrating and amplifying negative emotion that they themselves have created through the fear of words. They have utterly wasted the time and effort of a generation on that which does not, will not, and can not work.

In the bright future of Star Trek, James Kirk explains, "We've each learned to be delighted with what we are." 

But in today's society, built by the children of the people who first dreamed of that utopia, people have been taught to hate what they are. On the one hand, people who are bright and capable now firmly believe that they need lower standards to compensate for the inadequacies they have been told they have. So we admit people into universities for which they are not prepared on the basis of superficialities and use the unsurprising drop-out rates of these unprepared people to justify a further lowering of the standards. All the while we ignore the plain fact that anybody of any race or class who was admitted with similar lack of preparation would also fail. We blame "racism" for these failures while simultaneously insisting that race does not exist, and denouncing those who agree.

On the other hand, some others are taught to blame themselves for past injustices in which they had no hand. They are held to be guilty for the sins of previous generations. They are taught that they are the undeserving recipients of privilege while at the same time being held to objectively higher standards. This results in a higher success rate for those relative few who meet the higher standards, ironically caused by the fundamentally bigoted nature of the selection process. Meanwhile, the fact of their numerical majority masks the vast quantity who have been excluded. Our attention is drawn from the fact that they not only succeed, but fail in greater numbers. We encourage adults to live as children well past the age where their parents themselves became parents. To a great degree this is due to our failure as a society to value diversity in occupation. Though there is genuine value and dignity in an honest trade, the sellers of education have consistently insisted that "success" must be measured "by degree". Of course, this success is achieved by buying their product.

We have been taught to weigh ourselves against the value of others rather than search for the intrinsic value within ourselves.

We have flushed Logic down the toilet.

--==\\FREE SPEECH ZONE//==--

In the bright future of Star Trek, the IDIC is a celebration of diversity.

IDIC is a celebration of those combinations that you would not have chosen for yourself. It is also a celebration of those combinations that you would have chosen. It's not just your "right to be weird", but equally someone else's right not to be. Regarding diversity, if you can't be content with the knowledge that someone else does not want to embrace your way of life then you are doing it wrong.

Let that sink in. It's not about them accepting you. That's not within your control; thus it's completely useless as a practical philosophy. Rather, it's about you accepting you, and allowing that others have the right to accept you or not, as they desire. It's about knowing that whatever their desire may be, it does not affect what you are. Your rights are unchanged. IDIC means that no matter who you are, others are not required to like what you like, think what you think, or feel what you feel.  It is the not-you-ness that makes it IDIC,

Likewise, you are free to follow your own principles. It is a personal philosophy over which you have control. You don't have to convince anyone else to do this. The philosophy can be shared, but the practice can not. It cannot be imposed, only accepted. It is this completeness of personal control that makes it Nome.

Kirk recalls to the Spock-clone the philosophy of the Vulcan IDIC and what it means. He also asks if an army of Spocks could impose peace on the galaxy and make other beings accept the Phylosian philosophy in defiance of the Vulcan IDIC concept.  The Spock-clone decides that it cannot be done. ("The Infinite Vulcan")  -- from The Star Trek Concordance by Bjo Trimble

Despite being uniquely individual, IDIC is objectively better than what we've been doing. Its application at the individual level provides a means of finding contentment that is not dependent on others. And as more practice it, that contentment can only grow exponentially, even among those who do not yet practice it. It is not dependent upon any established religion or culture... nor is contrary to the same, except those cultures that do not respect logic, life, commonality, individuality, and diversity. In such situations, where a relativist might sit back and observe injustice, we take the Human course of action and oppose that injustice.

Look, this is a made-up philosophy. They all are. It may seem to you to be quite silly for a person to seriously hold out the fictional culture of a fictional race and ask you to look at it seriously... not to adopt it, but to adapt it. But I'm doing that because a concept may be found to have value no matter where it originates. And this is not faddish or superficial. It requires thought to balance respect for the five points, and a complex morality emerges. 

• My thoughts and feelings are mine to control
• I can choose to not take offense at our differences
• I can choose to treat others with dignity
• I can choose to allow others their privacy
• I can maintain my own privacy about things that are no one else's business

Do I do all of these things?  Usually... by which I mean the great majority of the time. Sometimes I choose not to. Not only do I deem it prudent at times, but it validates that these things are choices. But I must admit that I am dismayed by people who honestly believe that they are "liberal" and wish to impose on others, silence others, compel others to their bidding, spy on others, punish others for differing opinions, and demand "acceptance" where a reverence for diversity requires tolerance. I am equally dismayed by people who honestly believe they are "conservative" and wish to do the very same, who violate privacy and property, and who practice exclusion in the name of freedom. They are both so very far removed from the ideals that we dreamed of. And if they do not abandon their present delusions, we will never, ever achieve that society.