Rational Philosophy

Dick Cavett’s folly, guns in parks.

The NY Times grants Dick Cavett considerable space to reflect in an entry called “À la Recherche de Youthful Folly.” Proust would roll in his grave. I’m not sure whose folly bears more of the responsibility for the piece making its way into the paper. Cavett wrote it, but the NY Times published it. Cavett reveals himself to be an unapologetic jerk. He talks about stringing newspapers across the road at night so that car drivers would get spooked and brake suddenly. He talks about deliberately tripping a fat guy who was chasing him after such a prank. He talks about ruthlessly picking on one of his peers. “Distasteful but [...] funny, which to me is always the important thing,” Cavett says.

Sure, these were things he did as a kid, but I think we all knew kids like that, and we knew then that they would always be jerks.

What’s the point of Cavett’s piece? Beyond self-indulgence, it’s hard to tell. But it does give us an example of immorality. Apart from a couple of throw away comments, Cavett displays a singular lack compassion for those who suffered at his hands. Yet his actions caused them unnecessary distress and put them in danger.

“Compassion,” Schopenhauer opined, “is the basis of all morality.”

Schopenhauer himself suffered greatly through the lack of compassion others showed him. When he submitted his essay “On The Basis of Morality” in response to a contest offered by Royal Danish Society of Scientific Studies, his was the only entry, but the society refused to award it the prize because they said he’d misunderstood the question.

The Royal Danish Society asked: “Are the source and foundation of morals to be looked for in an idea of morality lying immediately in consciousness (or conscience) and in the analysis of other fundamental moral concepts springing from that idea, or are they to be looked for in a different ground of knowledge?”

Schopenhauer answered that morality arises out of our awareness that:

1. Living things strive to exist.

2. If we oppose the striving to exist of another living thing (i.e., cause it deliberate harm) we are acting immorally.

Compassion, in Schopenhauer’s moral system, is the awareness that another’s suffering is no different from our own.

Maybe the Royal Danish Society just didn’t like his answer…

The marvelous thing about Schopenhauer’s explanation for moral feeling is that it strips away all of the layers of artificial moral concepts that arise out of systems of thought (religious and social) and examines morality in a very raw and immediate form.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has proposed a rule change that would allow people to carry concealed weapons in some national parks (the ones where state laws permit carrying concealed weapons). What intrigued me most about this story was the way in which the proposed rule change had come about: Kempthorne “proposed the rule in response to letters from 51 United States senators — 42 Republicans and 9 Democrats — who asked that the current rule be changed.”

So either 51 senators up and decided that despite the absence of any alarming crime statistics this was an issue that warranted a letter to Dirk, or the NRA lobbied the senators to press the Interior Secretary on the matter.

Those who run the parks oppose the proposal, saying that the guns would create more problems than they would resolve.

Which brings me back to thinking that our society suffers from a lack of philosophical instruction and education. Shouldn’t our children learn about such things? Shouldn’t those who administer our government be able to see past and hold firm against transparent political manipulation?

Dick Cavett and others like him can perhaps convince themselves that because something is socially acceptable it is not immoral. Schopenhauer’s piercing injunction reveals how ill-founded is such thinking.
Schopenhauer also said: “Rascals are always sociable — more’s the pity!”

(For those interested in the origin of moral and other feelings, my own book begins with the fundamental principles of space and time, arriving at some of the same general conclusions as Schopenhauer.)

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.

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?