The Good Samaritan: Love the One You're With

Let me first disclaim that I have reservations about the song I use in the title. If you cannot be with the one you love, settling for the one you are with seems to do her (him) a disservice. On the other hand, if you are with someone, I should hope that they are the one that you love. Anyway, moving on.

You might note that this post is about neither Kant nor philosophy inspired by music videos. Since no one commented to affirm my choice for the next two posts, I felt fairly free to change them. I will get to those two posts, eventually, of course. Instead I wanted to take a moment to write a post related to one by my sister on Love, specifically the part about the story of the Good Samaritan, because posting my thoughts as a response to someone else's feels more personal, or relational, than simply broadcasting my own ramblings.

Her post seemed very relevant to what was on my mind, as my walk home was occupied with thoughts about the insufficiency of liberal "rights based" ethics, and universal ethics in general. To explain, what I mean by a universal ethic is a system of deciding what is good to do wherein all moral agents, which you can usually just think of as people but some try to sneak animals into the mix, are given the same consideration. The liberal tradition is certainly universal, as anyone familiar with the little phrase, "[w]e hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal," will recognize. While we may all be, in some sense, created equal, and we may want society to endow us with uniform rights, any personal system of determining good actions which treats everyone as equals turns out to be fairly monstrous.

One quick example, suppose you want to buy your parents a gift for their birthday, because you are a better human being than I am. While you COULD spend your money on a gift, you could also spend it to feed a starving child in Africa, and if we are going to consider all people equally, it seems than preventing someone from starving is more important than purchasing a birthday gift. Thus, in a universal ethic, birthday gifts have to wait until all hunger, curable disease, and similar conditions are taken care of, unless your birthday gift happens to actually be Malaria medicine. Similarly, how could you justify conceiving a brand new baby when there are so many perfectly serviceable babies already languishing in orphanages waiting for adoption? While the world might seem like it would be better if we all subscribed to a universal ethic, I think we would actually end up with a world that was less humane, where the value of genuine care and human relationship was so deformed as to be a caricature of its intended appearance.

This is the problem addressed by relational ethics, sometimes called ethics of caring. Under systems of this form, one is allowed, even encouraged, to give special consideration to the people one encounters most immediately. The Jewish law expert's desire not to love absolutely everyone is a perfectly human response, which by no means makes it the one God would like us to have, but it does make it the one we have with which to work. Notice, however, that Jesus didn't say that the Samaritan was just cruising the desert roads looking for someone to assist. Since the Samaritan left the beaten man with an innkeeper, it seems reasonable to assume he was traveling in pursuit of his own business. However, when confronted with the immediacy of the beaten man, the Samaritan responded with an ethic of care, and cared for the man's injuries.

I am not arguing that we externalize suffering, by buying our fiancée an engagement ring with a blood diamond for example. Simply because we have a higher ethical duty to our loved ones does not excuse sociopathy towards strangers that we encounter, and when we make a choice that effects someone, we encounter them, if in a highly attenuated manner. The immediacy of our personal relationships will grant them higher ethical salience, but this does not entirely negate our ethical duty to the rest of the world.

Furthermore, when we directly encounter suffering, as in the case of the Samaritan and the robbed traveler, then our relationship is quite immediate, rather than attenuated. So I am not arguing against the validity of the parable of the Good Samaritan, just attempting to frame it within a context of immediate caring, rather than universal duty.

One argument against the humanity of current urban living conditions is that the abundance of stimuli overwhelms our ability to process it all. This leads to a dulling of the immediacy of encountered events, as we filter them through more relevance criterion to deal with the sheer weight of information. A dulling of immediacy quite naturally dulls the prospect of encountering a stranger as a fellow human being, which forms the basis of an ethic of caring. Simply put, if one steps over the beaten traveler on the sidewalk, without even noticing that they are there, one never has the opportunity to meet them and relate to them as a caring human being.

In conclusion, someone is born every day, but you really ought to make special effort to remember your parents' birthdays.

Facebook

A while ago, I noticed that the population of my Facebook friends list was approaching 500. Since 500 is a rather nice, round number in base 10, the thought occurred to me that it might be a grand thing to reach that number. However, as those of you who follow my every move on Facebook, don't I have an inflated notion of my own importance, might know, since the new calendar year I have shed a large amount of my friends list, it is a fair question to inquire what precipitated this alteration in priority.

Part of the explanation lies in the sense of alienation that I experience, to a greater or lesser sense, each time I return to Michigan. If my existence is often characterized by a deep sense of loneliness, then an overstocked friends list is, at best, a cruelly ironic joke, and at worst an attempt at self-deception. Paring my list down to include a higher concentration of people with whom I actually feel a social connection, whether only on Facebook for the most part or also in real life activities, allows me greater social satisfaction from my Facebook account. It is replicating socially what one does nutritionally when one cuts empty calories out of one's diet, except in this metaphor empty calories don't actually taste very good, once one realizes that the superficial satisfaction of appearing "popular" does not translate into the more substantive enjoyment of feeling "well liked."

The other satisfaction I obtained from the exercise was the enjoyment of better ordering my affairs. This is the same satisfaction I get when I utilize vacation time to assign my students grades or to straighten up my personal E-mail account. On a related note, during the vacation I spent an afternoon curled up on a friend's couch, in Oregon, working out what grades students had earned the past semester, that was a very fulfilling afternoon.

I suppose that if you are reading this, the odds of you being one of the people I removed from my friends list are rather slim, but I felt like explaining why it is that I did what I did, and may continue to do.

What is Best in Life?

This post was going to be titled, "What is Good?" but who can resist a corny movie reference? It is, of course, directly inspired by my sister's wonderful post encouraging that we seek good, but it may also address the question, "what matters?" which has been brought up.

While I have my own answer to these questions, and have for a long time, I was initially only going to discuss what these questions might mean to different people. I do like to leave you to find your own answers, as it is both an immensely satisfying project and the only way you will truly believe your own answer. However, I am dismayed with how people often answer this question when they do not agree with me, with money, fame, religion, or power in some combination, so I think it worthwhile to advocate for my own answer.

My answer to these questions was determined when I was in high school, and has yet to change. At that time, I considered the question, "what is the most important thing in the world to me?" The answer that fairly quickly presented itself was the people around me. In some sense, other people are the only things in this world that are real. For example, while a car may exist on a purely physical level as a thing of steel and oil, it is only a construction in our minds that understands that a car is a vehicle. Perhaps more telling is the existence of a book, without our minds interpretation a book is nearly impossible to tell apart from a blank journal, both hold almost exactly the same physical form, but a book can impart so much more to our minds. On the other hand, each and every person you will ever meet, or even with whom you will interact, carries around her or his own mind. This means that it doesn't matter how deeply you consider their existence, they still exist. Which, to me, means that their existence is once of the most important things to consider thoroughly.

This is not to say that money, fame, religion, or power are inherently bad values, just that without including people as one of your primary concerns you dance perilously close to becoming a monster. Without a concern for people, revering money quickly leads to the types of exploitation we see in colonialism or in Enron's treatment of their employees. If you seek fame, but not common good, one might become a cult leader, or the heartless star of a reality show if one prefers to avoid the Kool-Aide. Religion fervency that is not tempered with genuine human compassion can lead to religion violence, something most every religion experiences from some followers, or evangelists whose aid is conditional upon displays of piety from the needy. The pursuit of power regardless of the cost to others paves the way for poster-child evil politicians. I personally consider fame and religion to be among my motivators, but I attempt to always temper my endeavors with a consideration for my fellow humans.

So, go, find what you think is important! Once you do, look for it! But I implore you to place other humans high in your priorities.

The Second Greatest Commandment

"To love your neighbor as yourself." Poor guy, so close to the top, but only second best. But if Jesus felt this was the second most important thing that we can do, and between it and last weeks topic one could sum up the Law, then it is worth spending some time examining. First off, I hope people accept the interpretation that our neighbors, in this sense, are not just people with whom we share a fence, but all our fellow humans.

There is not a lot of explicit advice on how to love your neighbor, or yourself, in the Bible, but many of the Biblical commands involve taking care of ourselves and others. From how this is phrased, it almost seems like we should be good at loving ourselves, and use that as a model for how to love others. Unfortunately I think that many of us do not love ourselves in the way that Jesus desires, and often end up lacking in love for others as a consequence.

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This commandment does put me in mind of exactly one other, which I think I'll share briefly. "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" This is from Matthew 7:3, which is in a long section of Jesus expounding upon what the righteous life is. While it is inherently quite worthwhile stuff, it also serves as a reminder that the righteous life is so far out of our possible grasp, which is ok, because we are saved through faith and the blood of Jesus, more on that later, rather than our actions.

Anyway, Jesus goes on to say that we ought first remove the plank in our own eye, so we can see to remove the splinter in our neighbor's. I feel that here he is once again using subtle language with intent, can we remove the plank from our own eye? No, of course not, because the plank symbolizes sin, and we cannot remove our own sins, nor those of our neighbor. I interpret that passage not to mean that we should straighten up our own life, then make ourselves busy "fixing" the lives of people around us, but rather to remind us that it is not our place to "fix" ourselves or our neighbors, and we should, therefore, revert back to the prime directive for dealing with our neighbors, that is, to love them.

The Greatest Commandment

As mentioned, I intend to post each Wednesday this month with something of a theological nature. Since I have Christian beliefs, my posts will most likely be about my interpretation of the Christian faith as it is the one with which I am most familiar and about which I have thought the most. I also previously mentioned that I was interested in what was important, and how various religions answer that question, so today will be the first part of an answer to that question with regard to Christianity. Fortunately enough, there seems to be a fairly clear answer to this provided by Jesus in Matthew's words:

³⁴Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" ³⁷Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'^b]"> ³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' ⁴⁰All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
-Matthew 22

Of course, this is an answer that Jesus gave to a Pharisee question, and they are not always as obvious as they appear. But, it seems straightforward enough that I hope you are willing to take it at face value. So, if you accept that our greatest commandment is to love God, one might think it reasonable to ask what this means.

Since I am a fan of Jesus' teachings, I think it is worthwhile to point out that in John's words Jesus says, "¹⁵"If you love me, you will obey what I command." in chapter 22. This also seems fairly self explanitory. However, I feel it worth pointing out that Jesus is not ordering us to obey him, or saying that he wants our obedience, but rather that he wants our love, and a natural outgrowth of that love should be our attention to his words, after all, he grants us the same courtesy, when earlier in that same chapter he states, "¹⁴You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."

This is a nice simple answer to what the greatest commandment asks of us, but I make no claim to authority in my understanding of the subject. Since the Bible has been around for so long, many longer and more in depth answers have been formulated. I encourage you to search them out, or ask someone trained in this subject, if you want a more detailed answer to the question. And, as always, I encourage you to consider the question for yourself.

An Important Question

Well, since I took an algebra qual yesterday, I was going to be a jerk and ask some strange algebra question, to get back at all the people who ask, "Math, what do you study in math anyway?" But they probably don't read this anyway. If you are interested, feel free to find the Galois group of x^4-5 over the rationals.

Anyway, then I had a friend ask for a question. I doubt he wants to spend his afternoon researching abstract algebra to the point that he can answer this question, so I must provide a better question.

A while ago I was reading a book, called Looking For Alaska, wherein the characters were asked to write an essay for their religious class. The subject of the essay, as best I can recall as it was a library book I have since returned, was for them to give what they think is the most important question about our human experience and how the religions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam attempt to answer this question.

In thinking about this topic, I decided that the most important question I could come up with is, "What is important?" We are allotted limited time upon this earth and knowing what is important is essential to prioritizing that time and avoiding regrets. I have a fairly good idea how Christianity and Islam answer this question, so I am more interested in how you would answer the question.

For those of us who may be stuck in teacher training, I'm making this Tuesday a real time-killing doozy, multiple hard questions for your consideration. Listed starting with the ones I'm most interested in hearing your answers. What do you think is important to prioritize in life? What are important questions about our existence for us to consider, and why? If you come up with another question, how do religions attempt to answer it? How do religions attempt to answer what is important (emphasis on Buddhism, since I have no idea how they would answer it, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on Christianity and Islam if you want to share them? And finally, if G is a p-group, why does G necessarily have a non-trivial, abelian, factor group?

Ha, ok, I couldn't help myself. That last one is a question from the qual I couldn't answer, so if you can please explain. Spell checker not knowing abelian is a word loses Chrome some of my respect. If you think about these questions I would be interested in hearing your thoughts!