I Believe in People

As promised, this post is inspired by a TED talk. Specifically, this talk about spoken word poetry. While my post is not intricately related to the talk as a whole, as a spoken word poet, the speaker is fairly enjoyable to listen to.

At one point the speaker asks the audience to list three things they know to be true. This is an exercise she uses with aspiring spoken word poets in order to help them find a story of their own to tell. However, as a side effect of my years of modern education and rationalism, I couldn't think of anything I would go so far as to say that I knew to be true. There are many things in which I believe, some more strongly than others, but there is no single fact that I can think of that is not contingent upon a whole surrounding frame of perspectives and beliefs.

This is not to disparage the project of education and contemplation of reality, which would hardly be in keeping with the message of my blog. I believe there is great value in uncertainty. Although I have beliefs, I think I gain from remaining receptive to finding some truth in new views that people share with me. It also enables me to argue with anyone about anything, a skill that has affected me throughout most of my life, for good or for ill.

Later that evening, as I read through a site condemning historical misdeeds committed by some Christian missionaries in order to make the point that Christian evangelism has not always been sunshine and roses, it occurred to me that a few days earlier I had been defending the author of a book analyzing the most effective way to evangelize to Muslims. Then it occurred to me why I argue against everyone, because when you decide that something must be true, then something must be false, and people who believe wrong things no longer have a new perspective to encounter, but an incorrect perspective to correct. Now, I may not know much of anything, but I certainly believe in people. Not simply that they exist, but that every person has a valuable perspective that is simultaneously amazingly similar to mine in structure and breathtakingly different than mine in particular.

So, if I ever get into a silly argument with you over some point or another, please do not think that it is because I believe that you are wrong, that could not be further from the case. Nor is it because I believe the side I am arguing is right, and I am not trying to change your mind either. I am not playing Devil's Advocate, I am playing People's Advocate, for I believe that there are people out there who truly do hold whatever view I am defending. I am not trying to change your mind, but to open it to the value that these people can bring to your mind. And finally, I would do the same for your position if it seemed necessary.

100th Post

As I have mentioned, I look at the statistics for my blog a lot, perhaps somewhat obsessively. One of the things that interests me is which posts receive the most page views. Of course, this is a rather imperfect way to gauge which of my posts are having an effect, if people don't leave comments I rely on what I must.

So, for my hundredth post, I want to share the five most viewed posts, according to page views, my ten favorite posts, in hopes of changing the most viewed list a bit, and talk a little about what I have planned, and I, as always, welcome input about future content. I was going to list my top five favorite posts, but, quite pleasantly, I came across 16 posts that I really liked, so I decided to compromise and do a top ten. So, without further ado, the top five most viewed posts are:

5. ???

4. In Defense of Pi

3. Mathematics, A Eulogy?

2. Travelogue II: Fear and Hope

1. Kant Touch This

The first two are somewhat of a disappointment, I say almost nothing in ??? aside from asking if people have questions to suggest, and I think that In Defense of Pi, while a hot button issue, is a bit trivial, although I had fun writing it. The next two are posts of which I am proud, so I am glad to see them there. Kant was a solid post, but I find it uninspiring. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure that it showed up on this list, and was #1 by a large margin, for a reason related to the fact that it has generated half of my total spam comments. As usual, SpamBot pageviews count as heavily as the ones that I actually want. So, which posts do I actually wish people would remember me for?

10) Happy Independence Day!: This post hearkens back to when I expected this blog to be more political than philosophical. I also appreciate that it lays out some of my most foundational beliefs about our political system. Finally, I was just in a really good mood when I wrote it, and I appreciate that too.

9) A Call to Grandma: I like how this post fairly accurately captures how my mind works. It also manages to address how perception affects what we are willing to pay money for, and even what we can call property. Having read a little Marx now, I think there might be another post's worth on that topic.

8) Relationships: While not something I have as much empirical information about as I might like, an important topic nonetheless. This managed to do double duty as a Valentine's Day post and the second in my series on Kant's categorical imperative. I also like the interplay between the facts presented in the psychology articles and the ethics on how we ought respond to this info.

7) Why Am I Here?: Not only was this post reader inspired, something I really appreciate, it also gave me a chance to reflect on who I am, who I was, and how the two were bridged. I also was glad to have a reason to express my gratitude to those I could think of who helped me get here.

6) Mathematics: A Eulogy?: This post inspired a rich comment thread, that alone is something I very much like! While the above post talks about education in relation to my life, this is the first post on the list where I talk about the education system in general. As a math educator and student this is an important topic to me.

5) Education in Culture: What do you know, another post about education. This one addresses what I believe to be the fundamental problem with our education system overall, namely that our culture does not value education.

4) Travelogue II: Fear and Hope: In addition to reminding me of my most recent visit to Oregon, this post addresses race, our fear of "the other," and why libraries are not only awesome for pragmatic reasons but also for their implications for our society's philosophy.

3) Only a God Can Save Us: I think that the struggle to connect with our fellow humans is one of the, if not the, most important struggle that faces us in this world, and Nazis are not exempt from humanity. Sometimes we may try to set Nazis somehow beyond humanity, beyond the pale, but I think this is a serious error, and by contemplating the horrors spawned by the last century, in some ways we contemplate ourselves. I plan to write more on this in a post soon. This post also lacks a single comment, and I am unsure why, do people think I am way off base, or am I saying something so obviously true that it hardly bears mentioning?

2) Poker Face: As I have already mentioned, I think relationships and other people are kind of important. This post, in addition to being the first in my series on music videos, addresses the problems with knowing other people and being known to them, and the importance of continually trying.

1) The "Three 'R's": While much of this ordering was difficult, I am sure that this is my absolute favorite post thus far. Another education post, I attempt, with an indeterminate amount of success, to address what education and thought itself mean in a fundamental way, and why I believe them to be important enough to devote a large portion of my time to. Another post which has sparse feedback, and again I am unsure if it is because I am on the mark or well off of it. On the other hand, I seemed to inspire my sister to write a post in a similar vein, so I guess this post inspired someone other than myself, which makes me happy.

As mentioned, there were sixteen posts which I thought were quite worthy of note, so if you think I missed one of my most important posts, odds are I agree with you. My posts on feminism were almost overlooked in this list, although they are certainly of great importance to me. Again, aside from #1, much of my ordering was haphazard, chosen only to get a decision made.

In regards to the future of the blog, I always welcome inspiration from my readers, or their own blogs, and I have my sister, Karen, and ElfArmy to thank for the inspiration for quite a few of my own posts. If people want to see posts on a specific topic, or more posts on a theme that I have previously explored, please feel free to express that desire. That said, I also have a backlog of post ideas sitting in a draft, and the list has reached the rather impressive number of 13. I plan to do at least a couple responding to various TED talks I have watched, and also a couple responding to inspiration from webcomics that I read.

As I noted earlier, this blog has deviated quite significantly from my original idea of a political blog. As such, I am considering renaming my blog, and perhaps redecorating while I am at it. However, as I am not one who adapts to change easily, I felt it would be good to see what others thought about the idea of making such drastic, if cosmetic, changes to the blog.

I Am Dead and Gone

Sorry for my prolonged absence; last week I was quite busy/productive, this weekend I danced a bunch, nearly all day Saturday literally, somehow amidst all this I (finally) read The Hunger Games trilogy, and this week I am sick. However, the post's title neither refers to myself, nor my commitment to this blog, but rather to the song about which I intend to talk. That's right, as promised, this is my final (planned) installment in the series on music video philosophy. For those in the home audience paying attention, you might expect that this would be my 100th post, but as I was looking through my archive I found a post that was just a placeholder and deleted it, so 100 should be the next one, barring further deletions.

Anyway, on to Dead and Gone. Let me first say that while I really enjoy this song, and I really enjoy a lot of N'Synch songs, having Justin Timberlake featured in your song really diminishes its street cred', you feel me? Although, maybe this is appropriate, as Dead and Gone is about an ex-gangsta who has since left the life, citing fear for family safety and remorse over dead friends. Central to the song is that "the old me is dead and gone," hence the title.

While I am not familiar with a past of violence and crime, the message of alienation from one's past self rings true. In fact, the continuity of self is a serious philosophical question. We experience our lives as though we possess a single identity, yet with reflection, it is clear that fundamental things about who we are change as time goes by. It happens so gradually, usually, that at any one point it is easy to believe that you are who you have always been, but viewed over time it becomes clear that one's identity is in fact quite malleable, and the old you may indeed be dead and gone.

Of course, when major life changes are made quickly, and one's environment becomes extremely tumultuous, for example moving nearly across the country to try one's hand at grad school, the effects of personality drift can seem more pronounced. This is, of course, a big reason this song has such personal relevance to me. Whether one's personality shifts to accommodated the new environment, or simply due to a lack of familiar cornerstones that had previously anchored one's personality, is a question I fend interesting.

This line of thought also raises interesting questions about the nature of accountability. If sufficient time has elapsed since I did something that I truly am a fundamentally different person than the person that committed the act, in what sense can be held accountable for the action? This is immediately related to my reflections on mornings when I sleep through class and, although I am logically forced to conclude that I must have turned off my alarm at some point, I have no recollection of the event. If the me who wakes up neither remembers these actions nor condones them, but rather finds them seriously irresponsible and worthy of condemnation, in what manner am I to be held accountable for them?

In the end however, while the old me may be dead, he is certainly not gone. Who we are may not be identical to who we were, but it is intimately wrapped up in our past experiences and personalities. If I realize that I am no longer someone who recognizes myself as "myself" it may be a long and futile journey to, "find my way back home," to something that feels comfortable to consider as "myself," but it is a worthwhile journey, even if the destination remains ever out of reach. The quest to, "know thyself," remains as important as it was in the times of the Ancient Greeks, made all the harder by the realization that the "self" which we are to know is constantly in motion.

In conclusion, I just wanted to note a common theme I noticed in my posts on music videos. My first, "Poker Face," dealt with the difficulty to know others, and our desire to both know and be known. The next, "Gives You Hell," talked about how our self is being shaped by both our personal attributes and societal intervention. Finally I discuss the difficulty in even knowing ourselves. This leads to one last question, is the search for a sense of identity widespread through modern music, something common to these songs which causes me to become interested in them in particular, or something about myself which I am projecting onto these songs?

Kant and the Homeless

I consider this the third, and for the moment final, installment in my series on Kant's categorical imperative. The first dealt with call center employees and the second with romantic relationships, now I shall address the homeless; a topic that has long been on my mind.

For those who do not want to read my previous posts and are not familiar with Kant's caterogical imperative, a refresher is in order. How I most often hear it phrased is that we are to at all times treat other people as ends in themselves, never purely as a means. What this means to me is that we are to be aware that each human we encounter is as complexly motivated as we are, and out of respect for their moral agency interact with, rather than manipulate, them.

Rewind back to last August, as I visited my beloved Oregon. I was wandering the streets of Portland one lovely afternoon when I was addressed by a homeless man lying against a building. Because I think it is rude to simply ignore talk explicitly directed at me, and it violates the categorical imperative as I use the ignored to expedite my current project by ignoring, rather than engaging with, them, I stopped to hold a conversation.

Eventually he seemed to want a hand getting to his feet, and I obliged. Here I am unsure how satisfied I am with my decision, although it was a well lit hour of the day I think it compromised my safety. I guess I would do the same again, but I wouldn't be so bold as to encourage others in this path. Once he gained his feet he maintained a hold upon me, and did nothing menacing or harmful, but I found myself quite uncomfortable. Since he showed no sign of recognizing my discomfort, nor of ending the conversation, I begged leave with the notion that I had to hurry on toward my destination. As this was not quite true, I was running quite ahead of time in order to simply wander the town, here I violated the imperative.

My question, and I don't have a firm answer, is what ought I have done? Bluntly expressing my disinterest in continuing a conversation seems rude, something I try to avoid in general, but especially when in the grasp of a man of questionably sound mind. Can I justify violating the imperative on account of the man's diminished capacity?

It seems clear that our polite interactions are greatly predicated on a set of shared social habits. When one member of an interaction seems oblivious to the sub-contextual messages of the other, the preconditions for polite exchange begin to erode. And here I believe I have answered my own question, as I too feel like I often am missing a layer of information that somehow others interpret instinctively, and I would prefer to be told when I misstep as a result, rather than manipulated into proper behavior. So, I probably ought not to have lied to the nice homeless man, oh well.

One final note, considering the topic yesterday of ethical caring. I find it quite wondrous that, when interpreted through the categorical imperative, Kant's ethic agrees so well with a personal ethic of care. On one hand Kant is often seen as the epitome of universal rationality, and on the other hand is the very particular and personal ethic of immediacy, yet they seem completely in accordance on how we ought meet our fellow humans as we encounter them.

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.

We're Planning a Party!

As post 100 continues to creep closer, I have been wondering what I want to do with these last few posts leading up to it and with my 100th post. In my next couple of posts I want to write up some ideas I have had for a while. While my blog idea list continues to expand more than it shrinks, I would like to put out the third and final (planned) post in my Kantian respect and in my philosophy of pop music series.

That will take me up to post one hundred. As for that post, while I have some ideas, I also would like to know if you have any thoughts. It is clear to me that the main reason I have stuck with it so long, albeit erratically, is the pleasure I get from reading your responses, especially those that present a new perspective from which to view the situation, or expand on a point I may have overlooked.

It is not often that someone as inherently flighty as I am puts this much effort into a personal hobby; there is an embarrassingly bad set of webcomics to attest to that, and even my math blog has been lacking in updates lately. That I made it this far is because this isn't just a personal hobby to me, this is a shared undertaking. So, it only makes sense that I at least invite you to help plan my 100th post, since you have already helped me get to a place that I can talk about writing it.

I check my pageview stats slightly obsessively, because it is nice to know that what I write is being read. However, in addition to corrupted data from reporting computerized accesses, by SpamBots and the like, pageviews cannot tell me how much people are thinking about a post. To gauge that I basically rely on comments. Nothing heartens me more than to see commenters engaging in discussions independent of my participation in the comment thread.

If you have a thought regarding the 100th post, please feel free to leave it. And, as always, feel free to respond if you feel the urge! I'm sure I'll say it again in a couple of days, but it bears repeating, thank you for getting me this far!

Only a God Can Save Us

The Nazi's murdered an estimated 6 million European Jews and a like number of undesired individuals. You probably knew this though. Of course, if you are like me then you do not keep the exact number stored in your mind, as confronting calculated slaughter on that magnitude is not a comfortable thing to do every day.

This evening I watched a film on the philosopher Heidegger and his Nazi ties. It is a matter of some great consideration how philosophy can reconcile Heidegger's monumental contributions to 20th century philosophy with his staunch support for the Nazi party. In a way this mirrors the wider quandary that has faced humanity as a whole since the Second World War, how to reconcile being human with the will to inflict such massive suffering.

When talking about the link between capitalist economics and industrial technologies, Marx held that technology did not usher in capitalism, but rather the other way around. Once our economic system became capitalism this created the impetus for us to develop the technologies of the Industrial Revolution. It is interesting to examine the link between the World Wars and the Atomic Age in a similar fashion.

Throughout much of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear Armageddon was a very genuine and very widespread reality. However, did our newfound fear of global catastrophe stem more from the recent advances in technology, or from the recent revelations at just how far humans were willing to go in their quest to destroy each other? What is more unnerving, simply the fact that we had the technology to kill a million or so people with a single bomb, or that we had the will to systematically murder tens of millions of people to pursue a political ideology?

One direct result of our attempt to come to grips with the Holocaust was the Milgram Experiment. In this experiment, the subject, at the order of an actor playing a scientist, was ordered to administer a set of increasingly powerful shocks to another actor, who simulated being shocked, in another room. The subject could not see the actor being "shocked," but could hear the actor screaming and complaining of a heart condition. Of the participants, 65% went ahead with the final 450 volt "shock." Milgram's conclusion was that, if prompted by a percieved authority, people are quite capable, if not willing, to do things that they consider far outside the bounds of morality.

Personally, I find the Milgram Experiment, which has been repeated in numerous variations, simultaneously disturbing and comforting. It is disturbing for the obvious reason, no one really likes to be confronted with scientific evidence that, while humans may be inherently good, we do not inherently do good. However, I think that it is comforting in that it allows us to gain some perspective on the Holocaust.

At first blush, one wonders how something as horrible as the Holocaust could be permitted to occur. What kind of monsters must the Germans have been to become cogs in the vast machine of death? But, considering the results of the Milgram Experiment and related studies, there is evidence that, while the Germans may have been monsters, they are no more monstrous than the rest of us. We do not need to struggle to understand the dysfunction that allowed the Holocaust, because it is a dysfunction which we most likely share.

Of course, accepting that we too could have been Nazi's does not exculpate the Holocaust of its horrors! Rather, it condemns humanity as a whole for this crime. I think this is a good thing for two very important reasons. Firstly, it allows us to respond to Nazi's as fellow human beings, and I am generally of the opinion that promoting the shared bonds between people, even if it is that between myself and a Nazi, is good for the human condition as a whole. Secondly, it is a call to vigilance, as recognition that we could perpetrate a similar atrocity ought engender a cautionary response to, hopefully, enable us, on a personal rather than societal level, to avoid committing such a horror.

Heidegger himself never expressed remorse at supporting the Nazi party. Does this mean that, unlike countless other Germans, he never came to the conclusions that his actions under the regime were unconscionable? Maybe being a Nazi was tied so deeply to his philosophy and his own being of self that to deny Nazism would be to repudiate his own sense of self. Or perhaps his silence merely demonstrates a deep shame at the subject. Whatever the case, I encourage you to consider Heidegger's guilt not as an impartial judge, but as a fortunate co-conspirator who, thankfully, never had to find out whether you would truly make the leap to accomplice.

Notes: The movie we watched was called "Only a God Can Save Us," after a quote from Heidegger later in life, on an unrelated subject unfortunately. If you think you see influences from Christianity in my post (none are righteous, love thy neighbor, judge not lest you be judged, forgive!) you are not wrong. Some other interesting psychology studies include the Stanford Prison Experiment and the work of Solomon Asch.