Rational Philosophy

Whenever emotion overpowers my reason, I realize anew just how deep and powerful our emotional selves can be. Last night I blew up at my mother-in-law, convinced that I had reason on my side, completely unapologetic. And this morning when I woke up I felt the shame of hurting her feelings, and bewilderment at my irrational overreaction to what had upset me.

Emotion like reason, has its roots in our evolution as a species. Emotion came prior to reason. It developed out of the key, immediate survival responses of the human organism. Fear (and the fight or flight response), anger, sadness, happiness, disgust. As we have evolved reason we have naturally retained these valuable emotional responses, although we often use reason to suppress or override our emotional impulses.

Psychotherapy and similar therapeutic methods aim to help us smooth out the bumps in our emotional responses. It’s still OK to be angry or afraid, of course, but when our responses follow a particular pattern, or seem systematically extreme, we can try to figure out why and work on the underlying cause of these overreactions.

Emotion and reason sit side by side. We can reconcile them (sometimes) and we can better understand our emotions resulting in a happier cohabitation. But since emotion is an automatic response to a stimulus (like the reflex jerk when the doctor taps our knee with his mallet) the emotional response, however valuable in the moment, should never be used as the basis for a conceptual framework.

What do I mean by this?

To take first the example of my disagreement with my mother-in-law, I used my emotional response, my anger, as the foundation of my side of the disagreement. I slathered my rationale on top like icing on a dry cup-cake.

To take a more important example, the furore around abortion laws is an emotional furore. Reason rarely enters into the equation. People’s perspectives on abortion tend to polarize around their emotional response to the matter. The same is true of capital punishment. There are many other examples.

Likewise racists create a false rational framework founded on emotions of fear and hatred. There are countless other examples.
We can’t eradicate or expunge our emotions. But as individuals and as a society we would be well served to beware of using emotion as a starting point for reason.

The ordinary citizens of Myanmar have been risking suppression, arrest and death sending out reports and images of the junta’s increasingly brutal crackdown on protests. Recognizing and fearful of the power of rapid worldwide communication, the military junta in Myanmar has, apparently, cutoff Internet access to its people.

The impulse and philosophical interpretation of the courageous noble action of those Myanmar citizens and the fearful ignoble reaction of their oppressors bears some further thought. The situation is archetypal. Throughout history, defiant, brave individuals, knowing the risks they face, have nevertheless put themselves in danger to further the cause of justice and freedom. The greater the threat, it seems, the greater the risk that such people are willing to take.

Invariably, these people act upon the impulse to do something for the greater good. These are selfless acts. In the face of great danger to ones friends, family, society, nation, or even to the human species, we can become acutely aware of our own ultimate insignificance. The importance of the self dwindles. (I discuss this phenomenon and its origins in LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive.)

Whereas for the junta, the importance of the junta becomes bloated and all important, while the importance of other groups and of society in general dwindles. Very often an individual or small core of individuals holds sway over the regime that suppresses, but if the ethos and edicts of the regime are clear and clearly enforced, the psychology of the regime spreads far and deep (one only needs to think of Hitler’s fascist Germany for a terrifying example).

The junta and other similar regimes create a set of governing principles by which they define themselves. And this is the important part: Without that set of defining principles the group does not exist. In order to further its existence, it must continue to maintain and enforce the principles. That is why such a regime will always sooner or later resort to suppression and erosion of the principles of freedom, liberty and fair treatment.

The same process can be seen in the actions of the current US administration which has knowingly and unapologetically deceived its people and acted on its own whims without seeming to see the need for sticking to the established laws and protocols of national government and international dilpomacy. The Bush administration is founded on its own self-serving principles not on the principles of good government.

To return to the courageous individuals of Myanmar (and elsewhere in time and space) who have been resisting the junta and risking their lives, such courage requires true, immediate understanding of life’s value and purpose, and the oneness of all people. It is all that stands between us and blind, selfish lifelessness.

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The bra, apparently, turns 100 years old today. Apart from a few dicey years when the poor things were getting burned left and right, the bra has enjoyed a pretty robust first century. That most women now wear a bra on a day-to-day basis seems unremarkable; but that easy conclusion struck me differently when I saw the news today of its relative youthfulness as a piece of clothing. It caused me to wonder about the philosophy of our societal relationship with the bra.

I’ve been told that women wear bras for two reasons: To present their breasts in a way that enhances or optimizes their appearance, and to support their breasts so that they will not sag as much or as early in later life.

Like so many of our practices in a society, wearing bras modifies our concept of what is normal or natural by revising or reassociating our concept of what is normal or natural.

The process is something like this: People draw an association between perky breasts and youthfulness and beauty. This is a reflection of an innate conceptual process that has evolved over the development of the species: sexual desirability during the period of prime fertility. Some person devises a mechanism (the bra) to enhance, both short term and long term, the perkiness and shapeliness of a woman’s breasts. Society extends the innate concept of perky breasts being associated with desirability during peak fertility. Now perky breasts become associated with desirability, regardless of peak fertility. We have coopted the innate concept and transformed it into an explicit abstract concept.

Does this kind of transformation serve society or the species?

That’s a much more difficult philosophical question to answer. One could say that it serves neither society nor the species because the conceptual link we’ve to some extent manufactured or extended between perkiness of breast and sexual desirability clouds and inhibits the functioning of the innate concept. Crudely put, it messes with the hardwiring of sexual desirability with fertility.

I don’t want to pick on the bra. It’s the same with so many other aspects of society and in so many areas. Us men shave our beards, clip our nose hair, or wear toupes. Men and women dye their hair. We often engage in physical exercise to enhance our physical appearance. The list is practically endless.

What’s interesting is that consciousness, almost like a disease, creates a rampant, chaotic and overwhelming system of concepts that control our lives and our responses to a degree that often shrouds or obliviates our innante reactions and responses.

As an adaptive mechanism, consciousness has certainly been an enormously powerful mental function; one that has permitted humans to further the ends of the human species with incredibly effective results. We live in naturally inhospitable areas in comfort. We have removed innumerable threats from natural predators, sickness and disease. We have systems for harnessing natural resources. We organize our societies in ways that permit the vast majority to benefit from the highly specialized work of the few, each of us contributing work in our specialty.

But all of this produces layer upon layer of insulation from the innate and non-conscious operation of the species. It also allows us to wreak harm and havoc without fully understanding or while ignoring the consequences (deforestation, global warming, warfare).

In contrast, the bra perhaps seems like a relatively harmless affectation of modern society, and one which many of us, on balance, would choose to continue to live with, notwithstanding its unnatural function.

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Last night I performed a show with no audience. Apart from myself and the bass player, the only people in the room for much of the gig were the sound engineer and the wait person. (Toward the end a few people showed up early for the next act.) And yet, I was aware of creating a performance, an event. This event lacked an object, and so could be said to be not a true performance. After all, what is a performance without an audience?

The reverse of this experience, I suppose, would be an object without an event.

Just now I read the New York Times piece about a woman called Tania Head who has claimed to be a 9/11 survivor, a claim which now seems unverifiable and possibly false. Her story of survival has moved people. She has acted as a survivor and engaged with others as a survivor. If she is not a survivor, if her stories have been fabricated, then what does that say about the truth of the responses she has evoked in others?

From reading the Times piece it seems that Ms. Head has not been trying to make anyone feel anything inappropriate about the events of 9/11 or its aftermath. She has not been attempting to misrepresent the tragedy, only her own part in it. And yet, if I put myself in the shoes of someone who has spoken to Ms. Head and responded to her story, I would feel that something had been taken away from me, that I had been cheated.

This reaction seems at once rational and irrational.

In communication and in representation, the truth is illusive. Any encoding of a story or feeling into words or signs must fail to perfectly convey the truth. Communication is at best an approximation of the truth. Likewise, the study of fundamental physics tells us that nothing can be exactly known about a physical measurement. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle indicates this with great force: The more accurately we measure the location of a thing (a particle) the less sure we can be about its momentum. We can never approach exactness in either one or the other, since the inexactness of the other will approach infinity.

In Ms. Head’s case, if we presume for the sake of argument that she is not a survivor, then her story is a fabrication. Then again, it is a fabrication in which many of the aspects of the story are approximately accurate, they just didn’t happen to her. Ms. Head didn’t survive, but some did. Ms. Head didn’t experience the emotion of that trauma, but some did. She has drawn on her fiction, one presumes, from reports of the actual experiences of others.

Rationally then, again presuming that Ms. Head’s tale is fabrication, what she has done is to label something as her experience when it is not her experience. To label it a best approximation of her truth, when it is not. We only have our lives, and in our lives the closer we can come to an honest and true awareness of the world around us, the more we can derive value and add value. This, I think, is why a report such as this, of possibly deliberate fabrication, so makes us recoil and wish it were other.

 

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It’s interesting watching Giuliani run for president. While living in New York for the past fifteen years I’ve had some awareness of Giuliani and his perspectives. I feel as though I know him to some extent. His appearance before the National Rifle Association (the NRA) last week was fascinating. In an attempt to try to secure the NRA’s endorsment he felt obliged to defend his mayoral record of criticism of the NRA and his steadfast lobbying over that period for stricter gun control.

We all change our minds. It is important and inevitable for rational thinkers to revise and amend their thinking in the light of deeper or broader understanding. Often, politicians seem not to be permitted this right. And often politicians don’t try to exercise it, choosing instead to spin their ‘beliefs’ to best negotiate the current political waters.

Here is what Giuliani said to the NRA:

“At the time, what I was doing during the time that I was mayor was taking advantage of every law and every interpretation of every law that I could think of to reduce crime.”

On the face of it, there seems no reason to question that this is correct. It seems completely in accord with Giuliani’s recor. It also seems to concord with his declared intention at the time — to reduce crime and make New York a safer place.

But what is Giuliani’s intention now? And how do we interpret, philosophically, his shift in stance on gun control?

I’m not trying to think this through in order to lambast Giuliani. I know I, too, change my mind and wonder whether I’m doing so to suit my own ends. What seems to be important is to ask the question.

Giuliani’s priorities have changed. He is no longer the mayor of New York City. Therefore he has a new perspective. His goal in speaking to the NRA to further his political ambitions. But the critical question seems to be this: Did he intend to further his political ambitions by forging an allegiance with a powerful conservative group, or did he intend to further his political ambitions by speaking his mind and presenting his revised perspective on the importance and scope of gun control?

It is easy to jump to the first conclusion. I did when I first heard about Giuliani’s address. And then when watching clips of Giuliani’s address he seems sincere and thoughtful. Parsing the language of his U-turn we find that he sounds reasonable. He’s changed his mind, we think.

But if we parse his statements in a different way, if we look for Giuliani’s approach to arriving at rational convictions, statements and acts, we can draw a disturbing conclusion. What Giuliani declares is that he was using every means possible to make New York a safer place. He exorts this approach in his speech to the NRA saying that he used the same strategy in every aspect of his mayorship. Giuliani sees nothing wrong in this. He was trained to do this. He was, by all accounts, a very successful prosecutor of the cases that he prosecuted (although he was criticized for dropping the ones he didn’t feel confident about).

Giuliani’s philosophy, it seems, and by his own declaration, is one of exigency. I do what I do in order to achieve the result I want to achieve. Since the result is desirable, my actions are justified.

This philosophy is excellent so long as one has goals that are noble and altruistic. But a person who holds this philosophy is unlikely to consistently hold noble and altruistic goals because they are accustomed to setting goals based on need or desire.

An anecdote that will be familiar to all of those who lived through Giuliani’s mayorship. Giuliani had a dislike of ferrets. He pursued this dislike with all of the tenacity that he pursued everything else. He banned the keeping of ferrets as pets. Can a man who will issue laws against small mammals in the midst of a crackdown on crime in one of the world’s biggest cities really be expected to keep a perspective on the demand for exigency?

Following up on my post of a few days ago, news reports today indicate that the junta in Myanmar has resorted to even more extreme violence in suppressing the ongoing demonstrations. “YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Security forces in Myanmar opened fire on demonstrators Wednesday, and witnesses said police beat and dragged away dozens of Buddhist monks. The government said at least one person was killed, while dissident groups and media reported up to eight dead.”

Even knowing that the consequences of its actions can have no positive outcome, the junta escalates the confrontation and resorts to violent suppression that can only fan the flames and bring more attention from the rest of the world. Not to repeat what I’ve already said, but this is an immature strategy, even from a junta.

A similar conclusion can be drawn from seeing the headlines of the New York City tabloids this week, vilifying the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When we spend so much energy making Ahmadinejad, and by inference Iran, an evil enemy, aren’t we encouraging and supporting the efforts of the current administration to pursue a policy of escalation with the possible consequence of another disastrous war? Although we now know that the administration’s goal in Iraq was not to disarm it of weapons of mass destruction, we still do not know what was the true goal. To avoid a similar sequence of events with mass fatalities, it would be helpful to understand this as rationally and fully as we can.

Today:

In a CNN poll, 65% said that the UAW workers didn’t have the right to strike after a breakdown in talks with GM. In a Best Buy poll 90% of consumers said they didn’t fully understand high definition TVs. And after rallying in the wake of the fed’s cut in the lending rate last week, stocks dropped back as consumers began to worry again about the economic outlook.

Each of these statistics seem to point to a very interesting philosophical problem — sufficient understanding. I first encountered this concept in reading Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation. Schopenhauer rests the foundation of his philosophy on what he calls “the principle of sufficient reason,” by which he means that we cannot know everything, but we can draw conclusions from a solid ground of knowing (and no more).

In many aspects of life, it seems to me, the critical and the trivial, we just don’t know enough to form a valid opinion, or make a determination. Do the union representatives know enough about the complex repercussions of GM’s business strategy to determine that it will ultimately benefit their members to strike for a better deal? And do the respondent’s to CNN’s poll understand enough to say that it is wrong to strike? Clearly most consumer’s don’t understand enough about high definition technology to make an informed purchase decision (and yet we go out and buy HDTVs anyway). And can anyone claim to know enough about the hugely mysterious workings of the stock market to be able to accurately predict whether, even after a half percent cut in the minimum lending rate, it would be better to buy or sell.

We tend instead to approach these kinds of questions by parsing the broad principles at work, such as: GM’s plans to succeed in the free market must be better overall for workers and consumers than the union’s objective to do well for its members. HDTV is new technology and seems to synonymous with thin panel TVs so it must be worth buying. The lending market is in trouble so a cut in lending rates will be good for the market.

As I think about these kinds of things, I often wonder whether we can ever know enough about the questions at hand to form and draw sufficiently educated conclusions. And perhaps the broad brush stroke approach is the best we can do. Certainly, when we’re buying a new TV it is philosophically acceptable to assume that the newer technology has some merit and, depending on how much we value TV, is worth the money. After all, what’s the downside? Likewise, when we invest in the stock market, we know that we are engaging in an ultimately risky practice, and gauge our investments accordingly. But what about the UAW and its members? What about GM?

After all, the advent of unions was critically important to society in the early decades of the industrial revolution. Without unions, workers were at the mercy of their employers. Today it sometimes seems that the companies are at the mercy of the unions. Certainly, the equation is more balanced.

I’m not trying to draw a conclusion here, but just to point out that each problem requires that we attempt to dig deeply to find the appropriate principles at work. And we can’t arrive at these principles without considerable reflection and research. Too often, perhaps, we hold opinions based on a simplistic and tenuous understanding.

This, I think, is partly because the questions we’re faced with are many and varied, huge and sophisticated; how can we possibly know enough to draw sufficiently reasoned conclusions about the myriad complex questions of the day? And why then do we attempt to do just that? A fair answer would be that if we don’t somebody else will…

Last night I watched Being John Malkovich with my family. I’d seen it when it first came out about seven years ago, but remembered very few of the specifics. As he typically does, Charlie Kaufman uses the forum of his screenplay to tease up some interesting philosophical insights and dilemmas.

Early on in the movie Craig Wright (played by John Cusack), miserable and unemployed, bemoans the curse of consciousness to his wife’s chimpanzee. Without consciousness, he says, we wouldn’t feel pain and suffering; consciousness brings just one solace — the joy of doing one’s work; when we’re denied that, what do we have? (Later on in the movie, Kaufman wryly pokes fun at Wright’s self-indulgence by showing a scene in which the chimpanzee recalls the emotional pain and trauma of being captured with his parents in the jungle, after failing to save them.)

As with all traits and capabilities of living things, consciousness evolved because it provided an advantage to survival. As I explore in considerable detail in LIFE!, consciousness allows us to manipulate abstract concepts to our advantage (and to our disadvantage, of course, when we don’t fully follow through on our rational convictions!) Without trying to read too much into Kaufman’s intentions in writing his script, Being John Malkovich presents us with the interesting question — “what is self?”

Craig discovers a portal that can transport people inside John Malkovich’s head, seeing what Malkovich sees, feeling what Malkovich feels. Later in the movie, Craig — a puppeteer — manages to wrest control of Malkovich, living through his body and mind, ousting Malkovich and relegating Malkovich’s “self” to position of passive, subconscious (and incredibly frustrated) observation.

What is the self? Can it be modified? Is it definable? Are we what we think or what we do?

Kaufman neatly points to the perspective that our sense of self is a concept that arises out of consciousness. We have a sense of ourselves through our perception of ourselves. If we stop for a moment and imagine living without conscious reflection we can glimpse the feeling of “no self.” Before the onset of consciousness the concept of self wasn’t relevant.

Our sense of self then must be a combination of many things — our awareness of physical sensations, our mental processes both conscious and subconscious, our awareness and reflection upon our actions in the world, and our perception of our being in relation to the being of others. So although we feel that we are who we are, that some unchanging aspect of ourselves defines us, this can’t be true.

Most of the time we alter, adapt and adjust in small ways, reaffirming the sense that some core ’self’ exists that must be unassailably “us.” This serves us by providing a solid ground for our personality and sense of self, for our ego. Without this sense of a solid foundation, we would flounder or sink. But it also limits us. When we’re too stuck on the idea that our self is fixed and unchanging, we start to use it as a crutch to avoid stretching ourselves or working hard to adjust destructive habits or unwanted modes of behavior. If we refuse to believe that we can change ourselves, we remain static and stuck with the selves we have.

When I was a teenager and started drinking, I used alcohol as a way to avoid my self, to get out of my self, to try to be more engaged and engaging than I thought that I was when sober. This abuse became habitual. Right up until eight or nine years ago I regularly drank too much, often to the point of throwing up and passing out. By that point I hated this aspect of myself. I wanted to try to understand it and, if possible, change it. I had a young daughter and I felt ashamed and embarrassed for her to live with me like that. I went to see a therapist for the first time in my life (something that in the past I hadn’t believed in). Over the course of the next several years I was able to come to terms with the things that I felt so uncomfortable about that I wanted to drink them away. I now have a different self, a modified self.

I won’t give away the ending of ‘Being John Malkovich.’ I highly recommend it (and Kaufman’s other movies) for those who like to think as they watch.

Two New York Times stories today got me thinking again about the immaturity of nations.Monks March in Protest in Myanmar - “On Tuesday, when 1,000 monks demonstrated in several cities, security officials reportedly used tear gas and fired warning shots to disperse monks in Sittwe, west of Yangon. According to reports received by exile groups in Thailand, some monks were beaten and arrested.”

Calls for Belgium Break-up - “We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer.” - FILIP DEWINTER, the leader of a right-wing Flemish party, on Belgium’s ethnic tensions.

My son just started pre-school. He’s in the threes program but his classroom also has four and five year olds. As the classroom teacher explained it, this helps the children learn to care about and take care of the younger children in the class. By the time the threes become fours and fives they’ve learned how to care for their classmates.

By contrast then the government of nations must be in its infancy. Governments act so frequently liked petulant, misbehaving children. To what end do the misdeeds of the military junta in Myanmar serve the people of Myanmar? When party leaders fuel ethnic divisiveneness in Belgium does it really serve the people of Belgium and the region? And, closer to home, the present administration’s habit of lying to and concealing from the American people its true objectives, motives and methods has surely set back faith in this country and the American democtratic system by many years.

I’m wondering why, philosophically, it would be that elected leaders collectively and regularly act with such immaturity. It would be good for us to figure this out and start moving toward a better place. If countries could learn to act more maturely how much suffering could be avoided?

It would be easy to say that things have improved over time, that there is more global leadership maturity now than there was a hundred or a thousand years ago, and this may be true, but it isn’t dramatically and emphatically true. Today’s governments and the countries they represent have it in their power (and do) inflict far greater harm on one another than was inflicted hundreds of years ago.

My theory is this: Nations, the people in them and those who lead them, don’t agree in themselves nor between themselves on their goals, their intentions and their perspective on global society. We have no conceptual grounding for good government and international relations.

Society is immature because the foundational principles of society aren’t understood and converted into best practices. As societies we act emotionally, irrationally, out of fear and pride and avarice. A sovereign nation is the three year old who holds onto a toy because letting another child play with it, even for a moment, even when it belongs to her, is inconceivable.

On a smaller more intimate scale societies can often function well. Codes of practice are well understood and can be easily reinforced, but more importantly the codes of practice can be clearly tied back to what is rationally in the best interests of the group. The same applies to the better organized, more rational governments of the world, where there has been a great effort to balance the good of all with the good of the individual.

A society that does not seek to balance the good of the individual with the good of the group, a society that permits discrimination, or that allows its government to pursue nationalistic or selfish ends, is illfounded and irrational. Human existence can only persist if we recognize that we all belong to human society, and that ultimately we must work to contribute positively to human society, putting aside our apparent differences.

Plato proposed “philosophers [must] become kings…or those now called kings [must]…genuinely and adequately philosophize” (The Republic, 473c). And when one looks at the numbskulls and charlatans running many of the world’s nations, it seems self-evident that a good dose of reflection and philosophy would serve society well. Or perhaps a few days in a threes program…

Postscript (September 23, 2007):

Since writing this post I’ve tried to imagine George W. Bush engaging in serious self-reflection and philosophical study. Not an easy picture to conjure up. For our leaders to be capable of the serious application of rational principles, we need to reflect upon, consider and apply the same rational principles when we elect them.

I saw a news clip today about a New York City stockbroker assaulting a fellow spinner in a spin class (he pushed him and his bike against the wall). The reason: he was enraged by the man’s grunting.

And yesterday I was introduced to the term “Dumbfounding.” As reported in the science section of the New York Times, Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist, has proposed that human beings have an innate and pre-rational sense of judgment about right and wrong that evolved as useful to our survival, but leaves us “dumbfounded” when our rational mind can’t explain why we feel that something is abhorrent or wrong.

I would guess that the NYC stockbroker’s ire derived from a pre-rational response; when he wakes up tomorrow he’ll wonder how he could have been so enraged as to assault another person for grunting, and get himself into so much hot water in the process.

Haidt’s hypothesis concurs with my own thinking on the origin and evolution of our moral sense. In LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do to Survive I propose that our sense of morality has been baked into our genes through evolution, and came about for the very simple reason that if we are to persist as an organsim we need to react in certain ways that will help us survive (all of which I tie to the very concrete principles that shape the universe). This also gives us a very concrete basis by which to understand and discuss our sense of morality.

But upon reading about the poor stockbroker and his unfortunate victim I was struck again by something that occurs to me regularly. We live in a world, in a society, that has evolved very rapidly, and evolves ever more rapidly. We are evolved but we’re less evolved than sometimes we’d like to think. We step out into the world feeling that we are equal to its challenges, but it’s like stepping out onto a moving sidewalk. Whether it’s the grunting of a fellow spin class member, or a jittery stockmarket, or a pair of dirty socks left lying on the bedroom floor, we’re not always as psychologically well-equipped as the world demands. Our rational minds have created a mental world that has a dizzying range of customs, procedures, laws, etiquette, social and workplace demands, and underneath the surface our innate urges and responses sometimes can’t keep up.