Rational Philosophy

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Last week I had my first introduction to the layered world views of Buddhism. Apparently there are six of them, each one introducing a little more more enlightenment than the one before.  Those aspiring to inner peace can ease themselves along the way by meditating on each worldview in turn and practicing its lessons in everyday life.

I got to hear the first two during a yoga class Dharma talk. I apologize to Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike if I’m paraphrasing poorly:

Worldview one: Everything changes, or nothing stays the same.

Worldview two: The present moment is what it is and we can do nothing to change it. (Although how we respond to the present moment affects the next moment and the next.)

If something can immediately start to be dwelled upon I immediately began to dwell upon the practice of these worldviews. They seemed to have something to say about every frustration or concern traveling through my mind at the time and about every tricky situation I encountered from that point forward.

I was anxious, for instance, about the ongoing process of approvals at the New York City Department of Buildings (for our renovation) — the Buddhist worldviews helped me realize that I could not change the delays and hurdles, but that they would change with time. My daughter failed her chemistry regents and had to sign up for summer school — I was able to reassure her that this was not the end of the world, as it might seem, but just a modification to her plans for the summer, and a chance to get to learn a bit more about chemistry. And the England soccer team were knocked out of the World Cup after playing several lackluster games of soccer — a mediocre performance for my home country’s national squad; something of a tradition of late.

But while watching a PBS documentary about Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens as he was born) I realized that not only frustrations and hurdles but successes and satisfactions are fleeting and illusory.

Mark Twain’s life story provides a template through which to understand the weaknesses of the capitalist, consumerist worldview that we generally find ourselves stuck in: The perceived rightness of our aspiration for wealth, power, leisure, fame.

Twain denounced and reviled at these aspirations through his words but sought them endlessly in his deeds. He was not a hypocrite, I think, but a man conflicted, unable to reconcile his pleasure in material success and its trappings with his philosophical wisdom about the ultimate futility of striving mercilessly to fix anything that would inevitably change.

He made a fortune, built a beautiful home, surrounded himself with his loving and beloved family, and in the process set the seeds for losing it all (by financial overreaching).

The first two Buddhist worldviews teach us that not only must we practice acceptance and humility in failure and frustration, but also in success and satisfaction. Once I have succeeded in surmounting the feudal bureaucracy of the NYC DOB I will become a landlord and a homeowner with all of the challenges and hurdles that will bring. Once my daughter has passed her chemistry regents she’ll be focused on getting into college. Once England has a successful soccer team again… OK, if England ever has a successful soccer team again its successes won’t last forever (that privilege is reserved for Brazil).

Mississippi Steamboats

Near the beginning of the PBS Mark Twain documentary we learn that Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) started his adult life working on steamboats up and down the Mississippi river. He loved it. He was diligent. He worked his way up to the position of pilot. He earned more than the president. Each day on the river opened up new worlds for him and he never tired of the 1200 mile weeks-long trip ferrying passengers and cargo. It was all he wanted to do. Life on the river was like living a dream.

After 12 years on the river the civil war intervened and Twain was forced to move on for a while. He never went back. The rest of his life was full of ultimately frustrated striving.

Twain’s life can be viewed as the mirror image of Siddhartha’s life. Twain started from humble origins, achieved great satisfaction and happiness as a young man traveling up and down the river, but left that behind for a later life of fruitless searching for happiness in wealth, fame and comfort. Siddhartha began with wealth and comfort and moved on to strive for happiness and satisfaction, finding it as a ferry pilot on the river.

If only we could reach back in time and introduce Twain to the first two worldviews of Buddhism.

I was happy to hear this morning that the recession has officially ended. I heard it on NPR. And you can clearly see this is the case from the graph below:

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(The red bar at 2009 Q3 goes up instead of down.)

This is wonderful news, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The memory of this latest economic fiasco can now begin slowly to fade from individual, institutional, governmental, and collective memory. Oh, happy day.

PBS tried to throw me into despair on the night before the first World Series game by showing a documentary about the economic collapse that preceded the great depression. Those PBS folks are such wet blankets. Who wants to be reminded that we’ve made the same mistakes before and we’ll make them again?

In a related story, Professor Gordon Marino (yes, that professor Gordon Marino… what do you mean you’ve never heard of him?) tells us that we’ve lost contact with the exquisite malaise that is human despair. “If Kierkegaard were on Facebook,” he says, yes, he actually says that, “If Kierkegaard were on Facebook or could post a You Tube video,” yes, he says that, too, “he would certainly complain that we, who have listened to Prozac, have become deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair.”

Soren Kierkegaard, being miserable

Marino argues that Kierkegaard argues that whereas depression is a mental disorder, despair arises out of an imbalance between our character and our achievements. If despair had a pair of arms and a mouth it would be shaking us and saying “wake up!”

So, how did Kierkegaard know this way back when, but we’ve forgotten it? (And here I’m agreeing that Marino and Kierkegaard are onto something.) The pressure to feel good has begun to stunt our ability to submit ourselves to self examination. Evolution in reverse.

So, too, with running, we’re told. Forgoing the opportunity to use a reference to the term gluteus maximus for comic effect (tragic in itself) Tara Parker-Pope in her Well column presents the intriguing argument that the human body evolved to be good at long distance running:

We sweat, which is apparently much more cooling efficient than panting (even though we often do both at the same time), and therefore we’re well adapted to running long distances without over-heating. And the gluteus maximus (or, big-ass muscle) is the biggest of our muscles but rarely gets fussed when we’re walking - it’s all about running, apparently.

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How ironic that these days we generally take great pains not to sweat, and put our gluteus maximus to use as a cushion for those long hours of sitting while we avoid running.

It’s the end of the end, as Kierkegaard would have Twittered. But he didn’t Twitter, he wrote books and this is how he opened his “despair” opus:

A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation relating itself to itself in the relation. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity.

We forget history, but wring our hands at the tragedy of its repetition. We reject the rigors of self-examination, but lament endlessly about our fate. And we wonder why our ass is so big when we drive 0.2 miles to fetch a pack of Twinkies.

You can thank me later…

The Invisible Hand

Ah, the invisible hand, what a fine, dark metaphor to match these dark times. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations: The individual who “intends only his own gain is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

Wednesday’s New York Times editorial “Mr. McCain and the Economy” criticizes McCain on several fronts. 1. His claim that the economy is fundamentally sound, despite the latest cataclysms. 2. His clarification that what he meant by “fundamentally sound” was that he “believed in American workers.” and 3. His broadside that any blame that could fall fell surely on Wall Street’s “unbridled corruption and greed.”

“The crisis on Wall Street is fundamentally a failure to do the things that temper, detect and punish corruption and greed. It was a failure to police the markets, to enforce rules, to heed and sound warnings and expose questionable products and practices,” says the editorial, and with a flick of the wrist ends with a call to McCain to proffer new solutions or approaches that might correct the problems.

McCain, we’ve heard and he admits, suffers from a fundamental lack of interest in things financial (he doesn’t recall how many properties he and his wife own — eight). This is an unfortunate quality in the prospective leader of a country, especially during economic upheavals.

Record Profits in 2007 $1,300 per second

The invisible hand has another meaning here, too. McCain, intent on gaining the presidency is led by the invisible hand of greed in the Republican power-makers. It is no part of McCain’s intention to lead the country into financial disarray, to risk further dismantling of what was, prior to Bush’s presidency, a remarkably strong economy.

Economics is a complex subject. Even the experts don’t understand how economies really work. They are too vast, multi-faceted and irrational.

This last is an incredibly important point. Emotion, fear, mania, addiction, overoptimism all play significant roles in the way the economy heaves and rolls. The concept and model of a completely free market fails in the real world on this basis alone.

Subprime mortgage rescue plan (Simplified Diagram)

Subprime mortgages and the resulting current woes illustrate the second point about the illusion of the completely free market. A free market, a market without restraint, is free to collapse. If we want to prevent this (and who would argue that it’s not in the nation’s best interests to prevent occasional collapse of the economy) someone outside the market needs to be monitoring, reviewing and, if necessary, regulating such things as new financial instruments.

The last problem with the notion of a completely free market is the dangerous relationship with the seat of government. Large, wealthy corporations have deep pockets with which to influence government policy. And, worse yet, if agents of those corporations influence government thinking, policy and strategy (think Rove and Cheney) the power of government will exert an ultimately skewed and even destabilizing influence on the market.

This is exactly what has been happening, as the Times editorial points out: “The disconnect between work and reward has been especially acute during the Bush years, as workers’ incomes fell while corporate profits, which flow to investors and company executives, ballooned. For workers, that is a fundamental flaw in today’s economy. It is grounded in policies like a chronically inadequate minimum wage and an increasingly unprogressive tax system, for which Mr. McCain offers no alternatives.”

The free market is a nice idea, a useful model to illustrate one of the forces at work in an economy. But we should not forget that the invisible hand bends and shapes the market according to the will that wields it.

Related posts from around the Web:

Senate Democrats Discuss Bush-McCain Economic Policies - Senators Boxer, Stabenow, and Menendez discuss how the turmoil on Wall Street is a direct legacy of Bush-McCain economic policies that have failed this nation for eight years. Refusing to police lenders and neglecting to protect …

McCain’s Economic Solution: Hemorrhage More Money - … GOP nominee for his statement this morning — which they asserted was an announcement of support for $25 billion in government loans to the auto industry. So there we have it. McCain’s solution to our terrifyingly failing economy? …

McCain Follows Obama With Direct Economic Ad (VIDEO) - “You, the American workers, are the best in the world,” says McCain. “But your economic security has been put at risk by the greed of Wall Street. That’s unacceptable. My opponent’s only solutions are talk and taxes. …

On human potential, personal development, and the philosophy of growth.

“Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse.”
- Miguel de Cervantes

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”
- Frank Herbert

US science fiction novelist (1920 - 1986)

Without reading too much into the respective literary ouevres of these two authors, we may not be surprised that Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, observer and recorder of human failings and doomed repetitions, takes an essentially pessimistic view of human nature, while Frank Herbert, a creator of alternative realities, perceives unlimited boundaries for knowledge and achievement. (Herbert spoke with enthusiasm about the positive power of science fiction to point to possibilities, including potholes or chasms that we should avoid.)

Biographers describe Cervantes the young man as brash and idealistic. He fits Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s model of a person with a “fixed mind-set.”   “If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow”, in this week’s NY Times, discusses Dweck’s theory of fixed versus flexible mind-sets. In Dweck’s own words: “People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed tend to push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.”

Dweck believes that society’s obsession with natural ability thwarts our capacity for growth.

Don Quixote’s imaginary battles against windmills and flocks of sheep speak to me of his creator’s struggle with the idea of fixed potential. That Quixote’s engagements, won or lost, are illusory magnifies the futility of these attempts to conquer fabricated enemies and prove himself worthy of his love. As he grew up, Cervantes’ family moved from town to town, never settling. It’s easy to imagine Cervantes the brash, idealistic, talented young man wanting to achieve something real, but unable to stand long enough on firm ground to be sure of what was real, each move to a new place confirming the isolated and unchangeable nature of his self.

Contrast this with the assertion of Frank Herbert’s son that his father didn’t finish college because he took only to the courses that interested him, forgoing required classes. Herbert worked at writing for many years before achieving success, relying on his wife’s income to support them. He submitted his landmark science fiction work — Dune — to 20 publishers before it was picked up for publication by a smallish press.

Obviously, even within Dweck’s postulate, talented people can achieve success (Cervantes may be a prime example), but she claims that people can achieve more success if they maintain a flexible mind-set. (She cites several mighty examples from the business world — John F. Welch Jr. of General Electric, for his emphasis on teamwork over individual genius; Louis V. Gerstner Jr. of I.B.M., who praised ‘the thousands of I.B.M.’ers who never gave up on their company’; and Anne M. Mulcahy of Xerox, who turned an eye to morale and staff development even as she made tough cuts.)

If you’re reading this and thinking “jeez that sucks, I’m one of those people with a fixed mind-set;” I’d hold out a little branch of hope, attached to a big old tree of potential. To begin the conversion from a fixed mind-set to a flexible mind-set we need only accept the concept of self doubt. What if we aren’t born fully formed and unchangeable? What if we accept that growth is possible but takes work…

Related posts from around the web…

Mindset, it will profoundly affect everything. - If you answer yes, your thinking about learning is aligned with a key quiet leader principle and you likely have a “growth mindset,” a personal characteristic that Professor Carol Dweck says will “profoundly affect all aspect of a …

Fixed Mind-Set vs. Growth Mind-Set - The article describes the implications of the research of Stanford University Psychology Professor Carol Dweck. In an interview of Carol Dweck by Coert Visser, Dweck said:. People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill …

On failure pt. 2 - Rae-Dupree sums up thoughts from a 2006 book by Carol Dweck, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” that describes two views one holds about oneself. We can think we’re born with talent or not. Whether we think we’re Picasso or a dolt …

Clinton (Hillary), Polanski (Roman), Young Earth (In Texas), and red wine.

The Times reports that ‘Hillary Rosen, one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent women supporters, wrote on the Huffington Post Web site. “I am sure I was not alone in privately urging the campaign over the last two weeks to use the moment to take her due, pass the torch and cement her grace.”’

Ah, yes, the cementing of one’s grace; the trowel’s slap against the wet lime. For Clinton, one can imagine, this is the sound of the bricks being laid for her mausoleum. To let go of this campaign, once an inevitable victory, and to accept its loss, her oblivion. How long must it have been since Clinton defined herself in anything but political terms?

Roman Polanski has suffered tragedy (the murder of his family) and inflicted harm and misery (by having sex with a thirteen year-old girl). He’s also imbued the world with grace through his artistic endeavors. His victim, 30 years on, expresses her desire to let go of his crime. That crime has defined him these past thirty years, but has also defined her, to some extent, as its victim. If she can let go, she will be free of that definition. Whereas oddly, and rightly one feels, he will remain attached to his.

Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, chairs the state’s education board. As the Times reports, Dr. McLeroy believes that ‘Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event — thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion. “I believe a lot of incredible things,” he said, “The most incredible thing I believe is the Christmas story. That little baby born in the manger was the god that created the universe.”’

‘“I just don’t think [evolution is] true or it’s ever happened” … when he considers the case for evolution, Dr. McLeroy said, “it’s just not there.”’

I feel the same way about dentists. After all, before a dentist looks in your mouth, your teeth are fine, they’ve been getting along quite well. But as soon as a dentist pokes around in there all of a sudden you’ve got all of these problems that have been lurking for years.

And, come to think of it, I feel that way about Texas, too. The idea that such a state exists is just so preposterous. Sure, you can make a compelling case for Austin, but what about the rest? Naah. It’s just some left wing conspiracy to scare the rest of us into voting Democrat.

But if the Texas state education board succeeds in having schools teach the weaknesses of evolutionary theory, as it is dangerously close to doing, I may have to let go of the conviction that Texas and its dentists don’t exist.

Which brings me to today’s philosophic conundrum:

Should I drown my days of sorrow in red wine if it will only serve to extend them?

While we live in the moment we must accept the uncertainty of the future… and the past.

“Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks,”
– Mark Twain (who may lose his house twice over…)

Back in the dark ages of last November I wrote about a stockbroker who, in anger, jostled the stationary bike of a fellow spin-class member. Frustrated by the man’s grunting and shouting, he grabbed the handlebars of the offender’s bike, lifted it off the ground (while he was still on it) and dropped it. My blog post on the subject sports a photograph of the purportedly injured party, Stuart Sugarman, a partner at an investment firm, wearing a neck brace. Here we are in sunny June and I read that a jury has acquitted the stockbroker of assault, having found Mr. Sugarman to be an unreliable witness, and deciding that the incident didn’t, beyond reasonable doubt, result in Sugarman’s injuries.

When I wrote my original post I was convinced that the stockbroker, Christopher Carter, was guilty of something — perhaps not a crime, but certainly of unreasonably losing his cool. The current news story casts a somewhat heroic glow on Carter’s vigilante act, blaming Sugarman for being a boar in the class, and a liar to boot.

Where does the truth lie?

Some scientists have apparently decided that wherever the truth about dark energy lies they are not going to find it. Current calculations indicate that the universe is 4% regular matter (stars, planets, pencils), 22% dark matter, and 74% dark energy (not related to dark matter as far as we know). Despite a lot of attention and investigation, dark energy isn’t yielding its mysteries, and some scientists are worried that it won’t.

Such pessimism seems unwarranted at this point in time. After all, the future could last a long time. Why give up now?

I’m reasonably sure that Ray Kurzweil, noted futurist, would concur. Kurzweil has been making predictions about the future for over thirty years, with impressive results. In the ’80s he predicted that a computer would defeat the world chess champion by 1998 (it happened in 1997). Some of Kurzweil’s current predictions:

• Within 10 years, a drug that lets you eat whatever you want without gaining weight.
• Within 20 years, all energy will come from clean sources.
• In 15 years… your life expectancy will rise faster than you age.
• And then, by 2050, the Singularity, when humans and/or machines begin to evolve into immortal beings with ever-improving software.

Still doubtful? “Two decades ago he predicted that “early in the 21st century” blind people would be able to read anything anywhere using a handheld device. In 2002 he narrowed the arrival date to 2008. On Thursday night at the festival, he pulled out a new gadget the size of a cellphone, and when he pointed it at the brochure for the science festival, it had no trouble reading the text aloud.”

From a philosophical perspective, an interesting aspect of all of this is that time, as we perceive it, is all in our minds. The past and the future, as we commonly conceive of them, don’t exist. All of existence rests on the current moment. Reality is transitional. Causality creates our perception of time. The predictable changing of things, the nudge of being from one moment to the next. Without this, time would be meaningless.

(This, as a digression, is the clue to understanding our existence. Once we have accepted that the rules of causality shape the universe we live in, we can begin to understand why we live, think and feel the way we do.)

This morning when I woke up I was the proud owner of an idea for a sure-fire business opportunity. By 9:30am, that sunny feeling of certainty had been toppled as I found out that someone already held the copyright to my idea. All was lost. By 3pm, after a brief nap, I’d regained my optimism after dreaming up a revision to my idea… Time, you faithless lover, revise me again.

On the value of skepticism in philosophy and life.

Philosophy requires skepticism. Without the urge to doubt or question our immediate experience we cannot understand it. To Socrates, the ultimate knowing was knowing that he knew nothing. This idea, so central to the process of finding firm conceptual ground, has been taken up again and again by philosophers. A good philosopher has to be scrupulously skeptical, particularly of his own ideas. Bad philosophers tend to be bad because they have lousy ideas or because they’re not skeptical enough –

Schopenhauer, in his World As Will And Representation, spectacularly criticizes his contemporary, Hegel, for instance, because he saw Hegel as a self-aggrandizing mystic rather than a real philosopher. Here’s a sample of Schopenhauer’s delightful vitriol: “What was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make use of this privilege; Schelling at best equaled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel.”

In one of those curious NY Times pieces that hovers between information and advice, like a girl enjoying the attentions of two suitors while delicately avoiding a commitment to either, the NY Times reports on the desirability of skepticism as an asset for business leaders. The article points out that executives tend not to be as skeptical as they should be, causing them to fall on their noses more often than they should. The piece checks off a few reasons why this might be so:

1. If an executive doesn’t know the facts, he or she can’t make good decisions.

2. Hearing about the facts means being accessible and open to bad news.

3. Sometimes it’s not enough to be approachable and you need to go looking for bad news.

In everyday life, so long as we’re careful to understand the basis of our skepticism, skepticism can provide us with a helpful perspective on things. Socrates founded his skepticism on the sound philosophical ground that he knew only that he knew nothing. Such a fundamental skepticism would quickly prove impractical as we’re trying to get through the day. “Do I exist?” may be an eminently reasonable question when we first wake up, but it won’t get us into the bathroom to brush our teeth. Instead, there will be some things that it makes sense to be very skeptical about and others that we can pretty much accept at face value.

It makes sense to be skeptical of the e-mail from a complete stranger promising us a share of a vast fortune. And less sense to be skeptical about whether our schools should be teaching intelligent design.

But back to the reasons an executive may not always be as skeptical as he should be: I would add a fourth imperative to the Times’ ad hoc list — an executive may not want to admit that he is wrong. After all, he’s been making the decisions and setting the strategy, a change in direction often demonstrates that some of those prior decisions or plans were flawed. Letting go of the idea of one’s infallibility can be tough for the person in charge.

Clear thinking absolutely requires an acceptance of one’s fallibility. In my own life I’ve learned from my wife that I’m nearly always wrong. This sense of supreme fallibility has helped me immensely in my marriage. As a manager in the business world, I learned over the course of several years that my own ideas could always be improved upon; another valuable lesson.

As we wade on through this election year, I fear that we’re being too hard on the candidates as they make mistakes. The hypercritical election process, during which every statement is parsed and critiqued, only serves to drive the poor hopefuls toward the alluring but false embrace of purported infallibility. Don’t we want a president who, as the most important executive in the country, can feel comfortable with his or her fallibility?

In Iraq, two bomb attacks today killed 19. President Bush, the current national executive, had this to say yesterday about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: “By helping these young democracies grow in freedom and prosperity, we’ll lay the foundation of peace for generations to come.”

Monkeys controlling robotics make the headlines (again) and the new, old practice of meditation gets some focus.

Back in January I wrote about monkeys who had used their minds to make robots walk on a treadmill. The article pointed out that the scientists involved had had monkeys control robotic limbs with their minds back in 2003. Along the same lines, in what The NY Times calls “the most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology” Nature has published results of experiments in which monkeys controlled prosthetic limbs to feed themselves. (Their own arms were gently restrained.) The results hold great promise for a new generation of advanced prosthetics. (Unfortunately, I can imagine that the Pentagon will be interested, too.)

And in the world of mind over melancholy the Times reports on the growing trend in using mindfulness meditation to help people combat such things as anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Generally an optimistic report, citing considerable enthusiasm and some degree of success, it also points out, a little ruefully, that some in the field don’t share this enthusiasm and question the success, even warning that for some the mindfulness meditation seems to make things worse. The concept: In a calm, peaceful, centered state, the subject allows himself to experience the emotions that underlie his symptoms, learning to explore them and diffusing their power.

He didn’t call it mindfulness meditation (he didn’t call it anything) but this sounds a lot like much of the work I did with my life coach / therapist over the course of the last few years. So, from personal experience, I’d add that the skills of the therapist would be critical to determining success. Anyone can play the piano, but only a pianist can make the instrument produce reliably pleasant sounds. Or, perhaps a more apt analogy, you wouldn’t trust a podiatrist with your by-pass surgery.

Serge, in my experience, was an incredibly skilled and sophisticated practitioner, and with him I achieved regular breakthroughs that have stayed with me and changed my life. But I can easily imagine that the same techniques applied without supreme care, patience and respect could well make matters worse. The therapy subject places his or her most delicate feelings in the hands of the therapist, and the interaction between them is critical. (As a case in point, the article talks about therapies that last eight weeks, clearly not enough time for the therapist to win the trust of his or her patient.)

All of which brings me to thinking, curiously, about Scott McClellan, the ousted Bush press secretary, who casts various aspersions on the current administration’s delusions, deceptions and duplicity in his new book. Not surprisingly, the White House “responds negatively” as the Times puts it. And Bush, true to form, says he won’t read it — he’s too busy deciding what to meddle in next.

In the book, McClellan describes Bush as a president who could convince himself of anything (hmmm), claims that both he and Bush were duped about the Plame leak, and describes Bush in tears as he sympathizes with his old friend just after he’s given him the boot. As I think about this it summons up a mental image of Rove and Cheney controlling Bush as deftly as a pair of monkeys reaching for grapes with prosthetic limbs, simultaneous with an image of Bush engaging in some kind of distorted mindfulness therapy with his old buddy McClellan, wallowing in memories of the good old days as the tears roll down his cheeks. Well the therapy clearly didn’t leave McClellan feeling warm and fuzzy, I wonder what it did for Bush…

Is freedom in the mind? Can we make ourselves feel more free? Why does it seem that freedom cannot be an inevitably relative concept?

As I’ve mentioned before I recently quit my job (after working in technology support for a law firm for almost twelve years,) and with it my career (of almost twenty-two years). This was a change I’d been planning for and working toward for some time. Already it has had a profound effect on my sense of self, and, in particular, on my sense of freedom. Since this change coincided with the birth of my second son, I’m not actually particularly more free — in terms of available time (which is why it’s after 9pm and I’m only just sitting down to write my blog!) but I now feel free, whereas I used to feel tethered.

In an interview with Alison Link the NY Times explores the concept of personal freedom. Link presents some fascinating concepts and relates experiences about freedom, leisure and our sense of self. In particular, I was struck by the following thoughts from Link:

- “I am most at leisure when I feel free, present and integrated.”

- “wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t define ourselves by our work? It should be just as valid to define ourselves by our leisure.”

- “Whenever I conduct workshops …, I ask people how free they feel … on a scale of 0 to 100. The responses are usually about the same whether I am talking to people in a correctional facility or at a workplace. I have learned firsthand that some people feel free while behind bars (and use their time in a positive way), yet others feel “locked up” while living in society.”

Link endorses the idea that leisure deserves to be prioritized. She counsels people to think about what they find most fulfilling and when they feel their best. Then she encourages them to find ways to increase the time spent on these things, even if the only time they have available is a few minutes here and there.

Link also recognizes that people have many reasons not to give themselves this freedom. She encourage people to avoid behaviors and patterns that will prevent them from indulging their sense of freedom.

The concept of restriction or “non-freedom” can correspond to real circumstances — being bound or confined, for instance. But in the sense of this post, and in the sense that interests Link, it corresponds to a state of mind. Link isn’t saying that people can’t ever be confined, and that any sense of non-freedom is artificial, she’s saying that even in the most restricted of circumstances our sense of freedom relates largely to our perception of freedom.

In Victor Frankl’s marvelous book — Man’s Search for Meaning — he relates how when he was in a Nazi concentration camp he and his fellow prisoners experienced moments of real joy (when being given a morsel more food or assigned to a marginally less arduous work detail). Despite the incomparable horrors of Nazi confinement, joy (the freedom of the spirit) was still possible.

Link gives the example of a woman working long stressful days in television production. She counseled the woman to plan and schedule even a few minutes of activity that she would find fulfilling (a cup of coffee, a short stroll) into her days. The woman reported an increased sense of freedom. Likewise, Link’s experiences with prisoners yielded examples of freedom despite confinement.

All of this can help us feel freer, I think, as we live our lives.

1. Freedom can be as much a matter of perspective as it is a matter of circumstance.

2. We can feel freer by taking small positive steps to do more things that feel fulfilling and to do fewer things that feel confining.

But here’s the catch: Circumstances really do have an effect on our sense of freedom. Link is preaching small change, mindset adjustment, as an effective technique no matter what. But, as Link recognizes, this can be just the first step toward more profound changes. (It’s not as though Link wouldn’t recommend to an inmate that he or she will feel freer by staying out of jail in future.)

Yes, we need to first understand that our sense of freedom is to a large degree determined by our perspective on it, and that no matter what the circumstances we can make small adjustments that contribute to our sense of freedom. But in keeping with this perspective we can also make large adjustments that will have a profound effect on our sense of freedom.

It is never too late and our situations are never too desperate to make small and large changes that will make us feel freer.

For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.

On the separate worlds of science and religion.

For what reads like a fluff piece, Cornelia Dean’s portrait of evolutionary biologist and author Francisco J. Ayala manages to press some pertinent buttons. Specifically:

1. The title “Roving Defender of Evolution, And Room for God” might mislead. It seems to imply that Ayala speaks not just as a scientist but as a believer. But the piece closes as follows: “Dr. Ayala will not say whether he remains a religious believer. ‘I don’t want to be tagged,’ he said. ‘By one side or the other.’”

2. Ayala makes some curious statements about evolution and evil. As Dean reports “If God or some other intelligent agent made things this way on purpose, [Ayala] said, ‘then he is a sadist…’” And quoted Ayala from his book: “Evolution ‘provided the ‘missing link’ in the explanation of evil in the world.’”

3. And, in passing, Dean inserts this dramatic and non-trivial opinion: “‘Science and religion concern nonoverlapping realms of knowledge,’ [Ayala] writes in the new book. ‘It is only when assertions are made beyond their legitimate boundaries that evolutionary theory and religious belief appear to be antithetical.’”

The NY Times exhibits poor editorial judgment in publishing the piece under the chosen title. I don’t know whether the Times is diluting its editorial expertise in the move to become an up-to-date on-line news resource. And I don’t have an assiduous record of the editorial quality of the paper. But it’s my passing impression that the mismatch between titles and content is happening somewhat frequently on-line. I don’t ever recall it happening in the printed paper. The piece itself is less focused and on-point than one would expect from a top notch news source. In an Internet world overflowing with dubious content, these things matter enormously.

I’m fascinated by Ayala’s equating of evolution with an explanation for evil. Given the sketchy coverage of Ayala’s views and opinions, I’m guessing that he has much more to say on the subject. But from the little we have to work with Ayala seems to be saying that evolution lets God off the hook for being the source of evil.

This brings us to the third point. If science and religion concern nonoverlapping realms of knowledge then on what basis can we cross-reference evolution and evil?

Here are my specific responses:

a. Religion is not a realm of knowledge, it is a realm of belief. In furthering human understanding and combating intolerance, we must resist the confusion of scientific and rational knowledge (which is grounded in a common and reproducible perception of the world we live in) from religious belief (which is not).

b. Evil is a human construct related to belief and doesn’t “exist” other than as a concept. To casually conjoin the concept of evolution with the concept of evil overlaps science and religion in exactly the way that Ayala seems to decry.

c. I agree that denouncing religion in the name of science isn’t particularly helpful. But neither is it helpful for a renowned scientist to use his scientific credentials to explicitly “make room” for religion while being coy about his own beliefs.

As a side note, moral concepts arise out of our experience of the world around us. Morality is our way of making sense of the way that life seems to operate. If we explore the origin of the concept of morality we find that it has its fundamental grounds in the principles of space and time. Working rationally we can define a moral framework that relies only on logic and promotes ideas about goodness that reflect life as it is not life as we’ve been told it should be. — I describe this approach in detail in my book - LIFE!

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Evolution and the Problem of Evil - It does add force to the atheist’s argument from evil, but it’s just one point in a larger picture, and the problem as a whole would remain even if evolution were to fall. A person who accepts evolution and still believes in God can do …

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For a rational, science-based explanation of life’s meaning and purpose, please refer to my book: LIFE! Why We Exist… And What We Must Do To Survive.