Rational Philosophy

On lying, fibbing, tricking and kidding.

My four year-old son is learning the nuances of deceit. When he’s caught claiming that he didn’t eat that piece of candy you said he couldn’t have he says he was “just joking.” His deceptions have a straightforward purpose — to get something that he wants which would otherwise be denied him, or to avoid responsibility for something that would incur his parents’ displeasure. Transparent and predictable, his lies seem to come with the territory of being human. He’s learning about the commodity of untruth, and its cost.

One would think that by the time a person has grown to adulthood he or she has learned that obvious, easily uncovered untruths have little value and come at a high cost, especially when you live in the public eye.

Hillary Clinton, one can presume, must understand, abstractly at least, the high cost of silly lies. And yet she trots them out as if she were a four year-old. (I’m not exculpating Barack Obama, but his lies at least seem to be in keeping with his general philosophy and purpose, whereas Clinton’s sometimes confound us with their preposterous posturing.) Claiming to George Stephanopolous, for instance, that her support for summer gas tax relief was something other than just political pandering insults the intelligence of those who would vote for her.

Recent research into the psychology of lying suggests that people lie to deceive others or to deceive themselves. This research also suggests that lying to deceive oneself has an aspirational quality — the student who inflates his grade point average aspires to that grade point average, and, more often than not, will get closer to it over time.

Very often politicians lie because they aspire to be right. They lie to defend a position because they believe in their ability to hold correct positions. Hillary Clinton desperately wants to believe that her aspiration to the presidency is legitimate. Beyond anything else, a victory would validate her sense of her right to be center stage — politically and personally. When someone fights so desperately to win, it gives us a window into what they feel they have to lose.

Philosophically, deceit is a simple concept — the presentation of untruth in place of truth. We can quibble about what we mean by truth, about whether anything can be completely objective, but this is hairsplitting. When a student says his grade point average is 3.7 when it is really 3.1 this is deceit.

And deceit isn’t confined to humans. The natural world abounds with deceit. Animals camouflage, impersonate, dissemble, trick… all with the aim of staying alive or furthering their genes.

Early philosophers such as Socrates and Plato focused a great deal of attention on the mechanics of deception and the antidote of reason. They did this because they felt that too often people were deceived by illogic. Clear, unfettered truth was the primary battleground of their philosophy.

Amazingly, many hundreds of years later, despite great advances in so many fields, we still don’t teach our children the fundamentals of logic and reason as a matter of course. Until today, until right now, I’ve thought that this was simply an oversight. But I wonder now whether the battle that Socrates started isn’t still underway. Perhaps it’s a battle of humanity for humanity.

Here we have highly educated people fibbing like four year-olds. In Socrates’ day, the sophists were aware of their deceptions, and they succeeded because people wanted to believe them. Just so today, the Clintons of the world know that they’re dissembling, but people want to believe them. We like rhetoric. We like to think that the world might be something other than what it is. Reality is hard. The truth is unsavory. Let’s go for a drive…

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.

New findings of brain research, exoneration through DNA analysis, and relationship twists.

My four year-old son gloms on to new interests with great intensity and with a level of focus that seems infinitely unflagging. Depending on the interest, his mother and I either rejoice (relatively speaking) at his fascinations, or despair. But neither state lasts long. Just when we think he’ll be a Thomas The Tank Engine junky all his life (despair!), he moves on to Lightning McQueen (better). And as we begin to worry that he’s reciting all the words to the Cars movie, he drops that and moves on superheroes. Now we’re anxiously awaiting the next new thing while we try to figure out how to dissuade him from wearing his superhero costumes — complete with capes and masks — everywhere he goes.

For children, new habits are old hat. But as we grow to adulthood, we tend to narrow our focus and stick to things we feel comfortable with. But according to research findings (and this one passes the ‘duh!’ test) when we stretch ourselves and try new things, form new habits, we create new pathways in the brain, and even new brain cells, that can lead to innovative thinking.

The NY Times article is light on references, but points to a couple of interesting concepts:

1. That research in the 1960s indicated that we’re born with the capacity to tackle challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively.

2. That when we reach puberty our brains tend to close off half of that capacity, maintaining the approaches that have worked best for us so far.

These seem like very dubious claims. I’ve always felt that true analysis has to begin with innovation. Sure, spoon fed bookwork can be achieved with almost no innovation — if we’re told to tackle a problem in a certain way — but if we’re faced with a true challenge, one that comes without a prescription, don’t we have to think innovatively in order to get the analytical ball rolling?

So, I take these strict categorizations with a large grain of salt. But I do like the idea of challenging ourselves to forge new pathways in the brain. And the more that I read about the studies in this area, the more excited I become about the prospect that people can change the way they think. (See Irony And The Plastic Mind and The Promise of The Plastic Mind.) We can respect the idea that we approach challenges with some mix of analysis, procedure, collaboration and innovation, even if we don’t consider them mutually independent strategies. And this gives a new dimension to our habit experimentation — if we tend to do a lot of things heavy on analysis, try something that’s heavy on innovation…

NPR reports on James Lee Woodward, the 17th Dallas man to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Woodward had spent 27 years behind bars, even forgoing chances of parole because he wouldn’t apologize for a crime he didn’t commit. The new Dallas DA — Craig Watkins — is determined to reexamine as many dubious convictions as possible in order to get the innocent out from behind bars. At an institutional level Watkins has begun to institute new habits of fairness and due process in the DAs office. And this seems to be a very important connection between these two articles. Just as we can stretch ourselves on a personal level to get ourselves out of a rut, to challenge ourselves to think more innovatively, so, too, the same thing can and does happen with society.

Institutions, after all, comprise people, people doing what they’re accustomed to doing, and what they are told to do, or implicitly or explicitly encouraged to do. It is the Craig Watkins of the world who act as catalysts for change within our institutions. (Sadly Watkins success at overturning old convictions with DNA evidence can’t be replicated in other parts of Texas — everywhere else the DNA evidence of these old cases has been discarded.)
(Of course, not all change is positive. The Bush administration has provided a striking example fo change for the worse, creating an institutional mindset in government that has set the country back several decades in terms of enlightened national and global policies.)

Coincidental to the main theme of this post, I came across an article on CNN.com that dips into the things that can happen in relationships when one partner makes a big change. The report gives several examples — the man who encourages his wife to become a nudist, the woman who ditches her fiance when he quits his high power job, and the man who loses his wife when he tells her he’s a cross-dresser.

What’s interesting about the CNN article vis a vis this post is that it points to a subtle way that we can forge new pathways in relationships just by being ourselves, by accepting our desire for something and being honest about it. Interestingly, the relationship experts don’t seem to unreservedly endorse honesty and self-expression. There’s a bit of finger-wagging going on. But in each of the three examples I found it hard to see that the relationship would be worth salvaging if it couldn’t survive the new challenge at hand.

I’ll end with the words of James Lee Woodward: “Time is what you make of it. You’re living no matter where you are.”

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 biobigotry, regular bigotry, and the apparent contradiction of free-will.

Natalie Angier writes about our tendency to project human characteristics onto, and make human judgments of, animals. We take a dislike to certain species and favor others. And we justify our preferences on the basis of an animal’s behavior, its choice of habitats, its degree of invasiveness, its plumage… in short, on anything that inspires our appreciation or dislike. Angier calls this biobigotry.

Angier rightly implies that an animal is what it is and does what is in its nature to do; any judgment we put on it has relevance only as an artifact of our mind. By using the word biobigotry Angier connects the concept to the human-human bigotry of judgments based on race, gender, age, weight, etc.

Here we come to the paradox: If we say that animals do what it is their nature to do and shouldn’t be judged for it, then carry this idea forward and apply it to people, who likewise do what it is their nature to do, we end up concluding that people, too, can’t be judged as inherently despicable or adorable.

Is this a supportable premise?

It is wrong for Angier to condemn cowbirds for leaving their eggs in other birds’ nests; that’s what cowbirds do. But is it likewise wrong to condemn a person who steals, for instance? Isn’t the act of theft a result of a certain set of circumstances — genetic, environmental, and circumstantial.

If we follow this approach to its rigorous conclusion we can end up deciding that no one can be blamed for anything. For most of us this doesn’t sit well. So how can we resolve this paradox.

The resolution lies in the concept of free-will. The cowbird does not reflect on a set of choices available to it and decide it would prefer to leave its eggs in another bird’s nest. But the person who steals has a range of options from which to choose. Stealing is a choice.

Immediately, though, we see a problem with this approach. One could argue that for someone who is going to steal the range of possible options is illusory. The options exist in theory, but in practice he or she is preconditioned to reject the other options.

In this new paradox we have reached the limits of the applicability of human judgment. When we judge someone we judge them against a range of possible responses and actions, regardless of whether the person could have actually chosen differently given his or her psychological makeup and the situation at hand. We judge and condemn, in effect, not the person, but the person’s inability to make a better choice.

On the Supreme Court’s upholding of ID needs for voters, Barack Obama’s tussle with Wright’s preaching, and a couple of proposed field trips.

Upholding the Indiana state requirement for voters to show a picture ID, the Supreme Court majority concluded that this requirement wasn’t unduly burdensome on any class of voters. Indiana provides picture IDs at no cost for the poor and allows someone to vote without an ID if they subsequently show one within 10 days. (Souter, in his dissent, said the requirement could pose a non-trivial burden on many.)

After reading today that Obama attended Jeremiah Wright’s church for twenty years, I felt prompted to give some more thought to the controversy stirred up by Wright’s divisive and outspoken views. His critics would have Obama explain why he cannot be associated with Wright’s views when he sat through his sermons for twenty years.

Condoleezza Rice and the Bush administration have criticized President Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas and the Syrian leadership. Carter writes an elegant response to these criticisms in an op-ed today. What he says, effectively, is that avoiding discourse works far less well than engaging in discourse.

I don’t know whether Obama ever engaged Wright directly on his views. But just sitting through those sermons must have forced Obama into having to engage with the ideas being expressed, not to agree with them necessarily, but to acknowledge their presence in the world. If he’d got up and walked out and never come back he might have made a statement, but he would have missed out on years of study of Wright’s perspective — and Wright’s perspective is not unique. If the country’s leaders don’t engage with it, we won’t made progress against racism.

But while the furore continues the burden remains with Obama to define his identity. Much better for him to do this by being what he is (as he did in his eloquent speech on racism) rather than defend what he’s not.

(Ironically, sitting through endless speeches one disagrees with figures prominently in the job description for a law maker. Obama seems to have that qualification in spades.)

How does a Supreme Court judge begin to determine whether the acquisition of a picture ID constitutes a reasonable burden for a poor would-be voter in Indiana?

The ID may be free, but where are the administrative offices from where the IDs would be attained? How far from where people live? How convenient for public transportation? How long is the wait once they get there? What fears may large numbers of poor people have about applying for a picture ID?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they seem to be the kinds of questions one would need to answer before deciding whether the burden would be reasonable.

I suggest a field trip: Take the Supreme Court justices to Indiana. Let them go along with a couple of poor people to get their IDs, then decide.

I’d suggest the same for Obama’s critics. Have them attend a sermon at his church. Then ask them when they come out whether they’ve been swayed by Wright’s opinions.

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 work and self: Wesley Snipes, Tom Daley, Anna Quindlen, Rene Descartes

I’ve spent the past eleven years and ten months — more than half my working life — at the same firm. Today was my last day. I’m going to be writing more, and making more music, and probably a whole lot of things that I have no clue about just yet.

As I said goodbye to my colleagues this afternoon I was aware of how much the experience of working with them and doing what I’d been doing had changed me, how much I’d learned, how much I’d unlearned, and how much I’d grown and shifted. I was moving on, but not without taking the experience with me.

Actor Wesley Snipes, convicted on tax charges, has been sentenced to the maximum of three years in jail. As I read the story I was fascinated by the extent to which a movie star’s life must be affected by his or her sense of self as reflected by public opinion. Denzel Washington had written a letter of character reference to the court. I found myself sad for Snipes; excerpts from the letter seemed to describe the image of a man rather than the man himself.

Thirteen year old Tom Daley, a British diver who will compete in the Beijing Olympics, explained his approach to maintaining a balanced perspective like this: “I try and keep it all separate because when I’m not diving and doing media stuff I’m just a normal kid.”

And as I rode on the elevator in the office today, I saw this quote from Anna Quindlen:

“Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That’s what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first.”

It read like a personal message.

The philosophy of self is as old as the phenomenon of consciousness. It took several million years for this idea to be neatly framed and attributed to Descartes who coined the famous phrase: “Cogito ergo sum” trans. “I think therefore I am.”

To twist this idea into a framing of the concept of self we can say: “I am what I think.”

Some would immediately argue that we do many things without reflection, without thinking them through. Which is true. But the concept of “self” requires reflection. Once I have acted, my acts affect my sense of self according to the way that I process them.

I could have walked away from my job thinking that I was unchanged by it. Had I done so, my sense of self would have been quite different.

Actor Wesley Snipes (and others in the public eye) must process his immediate thoughts about himself as well as processing the opinions expressed by the world at large. Public opinion must place a tremendous strain on one’s ability to maintain a consistent and accurate sense of self.

Young diver Tom Daley demonstrates an admirable compartmentalization of private and public space. (It seems perhaps that children often have a greater aptitude for this than adults.) Daley prefigures Quindlen’s advice in years if not in time.

We can achieve great things. We can inspire great respect or admiration. We can, likewise, achieve little, or inspire no one. But we captain our sense of self over these waters as if it were the QE2, or a tug boat, or a kayak. We might never know or care that the QE2 is really a kayak, or vice versa.

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

On the negative swing in the Democratic primary campaign, global warming, and deconstruction.

Campaigning in Pennsylvania today, Barack Obama had this to say about the increasingly negative tone of the push for votes: “if you get elbowed enough, eventually you start elbowing back.” He labels the cause — “elbowing” — and the effect — “elbowing back.” I like Barack Obama, from what I know of him, and his analysis of the cause and effect of retaliation has some emotionally appealing weight to it — generally we don’t like to be pushed around — but it makes me wonder about the psychology of retaliation in a presidential candidate.

As fears rise of dire consequences from global warming, so does the noise of debate about what each of us can and should do to respond. Michael Pollan argues that although personal choices to, for instance, walk instead of drive, eat less meat, plant our back yard, may seem to be ineffective ways to generate the desired effect, they form a critical part of the only response that can help save our ecology in the long term — a change in attitude.

And Stanley Fish, in a typically dogmatic piece, insists that deconstruction didn’t change anything. After outlining the tumult in academia and the careers of academics post-deconstruction, Fish blithely dismisses the effect as something disconnected from its cause: “these effects, good and bad, happy and unhappy, did not flow from deconstruction as a matter of right and property; they were effects of which deconstruction just happened to be the occasion.”

(Tangentially I wonder whether Fish’s pattern of defending a hypothesis rather than challenging and investigating it has an overall beneficial result — because his topics and positions provoke thought and response — or not — since by lending the air of authority to his unswerving style, the Times does an implicit injustice to the practice of sound thinking… Unfortunately, I think, the latter.)

Nothing ‘just happens’ to be the occasion for an effect. Or, to put it another way, every cause is inevitably the occasion for its effect.

Obama speaks emotively but not convincingly when he says that Clinton’s elbowing caused his elbowing. We all know that the response to an an elbow in the ribs can be for us to present our other ribs for more elbowing. To unpack Obama’s words, what he meant was: “wouldn’t you eventually do the same thing if someone was needling you?” And he’s counting on most people saying, “well, yes, I believe I would.”

It’s a clever and appealing piece of rhetoric, but not an honest one. Obama knows that it would have been possible to keep the higher ground, but he’s been advised that he needs to strike back, and perhaps he also feels that it’s right to strike back. I, for one, would dearly like to know whether Obama believes this or not. How deep and strong is his belief in doing the right thing? That’s the reason to want to vote for him.

Michael Pollan presents at a subtle and important insight into the cause and effect of global warming — if we don’t change our attitudes, we won’t change the outcome. In itself, his journalism acts as a cause of changing attitude, informing and swaying opinion. He arrived at his opinion through reading and reflection. His reading and reflection wouldn’t and couldn’t have happened without the work and reflection of scientists and educators who went before him… This chain of cause and effect leads us back to the evolution of human consciousness, which also leads us back to the cause of global warming. This is, all at once, ironic, comforting, and somewhat alarming. Ironic: Global warming and the hope for averting disaster have been caused by the evolution of human consciousness. Comforting: If we broke it, we can fix it. Alarming: If this can happen, what’s in store for us next?

Philosophically speaking, the phenomenon of cause and effect is central to our cohesive experience of existence. Given the same conditions, we expect the same outcomes. Manifestations of existence (physical objects, energy fields, etc.) in time and space operate predictably to the extent that we have sufficient information to make those predictions. Even quantum mechanics results in predictable behaviors that reflect the probability of different outcomes.

We take cause and effect for granted. We’re so accustomed to its operation that we find it hard to imagine the world working in any other way. Because of this, perhaps, I think that we devalue the all pervasive workings of causality. We allow ourselves to believe that a stand-in for a reasonable cause (elbowing) is good enough. And that a well defended opinion (a la those of Stanley Fish) is as good as a rigorous and skeptical exploration. But, fortunately, we also recognize the real thing when we see it.

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

Does wealth tend to make us happy, and if so, why?

Last year I explored some philosophical theories of happiness and concluded that happiness may be what we feel when we sate our desires. More recently it occurred to me that we find some things intrinsically satisfying (sex, exercise, conviviality) and that we can also find accidental or consequential satisfaction (in games, reading, work). For thirty years or so the prevailing wisdom of economic theorists has been that money doesn’t make people happy — the Easterlin paradox says that once people meet their basic needs, increasing wealth doesn’t bring greater happiness. But new research questions Easterlin’s work and presents evidence that people with more money do tend to report higher levels of happiness.

Before getting to the central question at hand (what makes people happy) it’s worth pausing to note firstly that Easterlin’s conclusion is internally inconsistent, and secondly that we should regard statistics with great skepticism (about the most charitable thing one can say of statistics is that large numbers make interesting patterns).

Here’s the internal inconsistency: Let’s say that Easterlin correctly detected a relationship between satisfaction and wealth up to the point at which people’s basic needs are met. This result would tell us that wealth does affect happiness if only as a means to satisfy our basic needs. But basic needs have a way of changing. Health care, for instance, becomes more expensive as more expensive remedies, therapies and cures become available. Just today, for instance, we read about a fabulous new hearing aid that costs a few thousand dollars per year and isn’t covered by health care. It’s making people happier. Applying Easterlin’s theory then, as people’s expectations and perceptions of basic needs shifted they would need more money to pay for them, but Easterlin’s results indicate that this doesn’t happen.

Back to the question at hand: What makes people happy and how does wealth factor into that, if at all?

It still seems sensible to say that anything that intrinsically satisfies a need of the human organism will tend to make us happy (sex, food, exercise). Wealth can purchase or indirectly leverage access to some of these intrinsic satisfactions.

It also still seems sensible to say that we can derive incidental satisfaction from other activities (games, sport, creative outlets, work). Wealth can provide more time for or greater access to these things too.

But, and this is a big but, does this tell us anything about the priority we should give to the pursuit of wealth?

If we focus on making money at the expense of some of our intrinsic or incidental opportunities for satisfaction, we may well end up less happy. And if we have an unhealthy relationship with money, or if having money leads to negative consequences (if we don’t feel productive because we don’t work, for instance) then wealth may make us less happy.

This is the true paradox: Money can make us happier, but it comes at a price. Whether greater wealth will make us happier on balance varies enormously depending on the individual and his or her circumstances.

On Barack Obama’s elitism and George Bush’s subversion of elitism.

Elitism (American Heritage Dictionary): “The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.”

It’s interesting that the definition of elitism doesn’t capture the idea of the criticism leveled at Barack Obama. Obama’s not accused of believing that certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment, but that some people are less enlightened, less inclined to see things as they really are. Specifically, in now infamous remarks in San Francisco, he has implied that working-class voters cling to religion and the right to bear arms out of a displaced resentment of their economic plight.

It seems important to distinguish Obama’s brand of elitism from the elitism that would favor the rights and privileges of a privileged group over those of the masses. One couldn’t say that Obama sets the concerns of the smart or wealthy over those of the average American. Obama’s elitism rests on the concept of “knowing better.”

But hasn’t Obama pursued political office and now higher office because he believes he has the insight, vision and personal resources to improve people’s lives? Without wanting to split hairs, anyone who seeks to put himself into a position of authority or power for the right reasons must be, to some degree and in this sense, an elitist.

George Bush (son of a president, connected, wealthy, ivy league educated) subverts elitism by presenting himself as a common man, at one in his world-view with working class Americans (and we have been given no reason to doubt the presentation). His unsophisticated approach to leadership and analysis seems to win him adherents with those who want to see the world as a place of simple absolutes — good against evil, right and against wrong, oppression versus freedom, free market versus regulation.

Two urgent questions arise:

1. What makes someone elitist (in the sense of “knowing better”)?

2. Do we went to be governed by an elitist or by someone who sees the world more concretely?

For conscious creatures, such as we are, the world has two distinct aspects — the concrete and the conceptual. Everyone understands and feels the weight of both aspects. But the degree to which we feel them differs from one person to another. Some people, such as Bush, tend to feel more comfortable with the physical, tangible aspect, and distrust concepts that require complex abstraction and sophisticated thinking. Other people (like Obama) tend to feel more comfortable and sure-footed with the conceptual aspect.

Plato and Aristotle may have approved of Obama’s unfortunate remarks, but as much as us elitists might want to impose our concepts on others, leadership and government can’t be successfully executed without an appreciation and respect for both. Too much of one or the other results in missteps.

Bush has screwed up because he’s eschewed the sophisticated analysis needed to anticipate problems and develop nuanced solutions. Obama, it seems, if he’s to be elected, will need to be careful to engage more with the tangibles of life and living, and, when necessary, keep his conceptual view of the world in perspective.

An elitist has the capacity to govern well if he or she can stay in touch with and not disdain or devalue the concrete aspects of life. A non-elitist can only govern well if he or she does not disdain or devalue the conceptual aspects of life. The flaws of a lop-sided approach to government have been only too clearly demonstrated over the past eight years.

The Democratic candidates’ remarks on religion.

William Kristol, in a disdainful, patronizing opinion, accuses Barack Obama of making disdainful, patronizing remarks about small-town America in his speech to a wealthy audience in San Francisco. “I haven’t read much Karl Marx since the early 1980s,” Kristol begins… How much more elitist can you get than that? Kristol seizes on Obama’s words, and, despite presenting counter-examples, claims that Obama has let slip his mask. Sadly, Kristol is working too hard to find a reason for Obama’s somewhat pandering comments. If there’s one thing we’ve had reinforced for us during this intensely observed political odyssey it is that politicians say things to attract as many to their cause as possible, while alienating as few people as possible.

For me, Clinton and Obama speaking on faith at the Compassion Forum at Messiah College in Pennsylvania has produced the worst of it yet.

Clinton: “You know, I have, ever since I’ve been a little girl, felt the presence of God in my life,” she said. “And it has been a gift of grace that has, for me, been incredibly sustaining.”

Obama: “I try as best I can to be an instrument of his work … to act in accordance with what I think are the precepts of my faith.”

Here we have the Democratic candidates touting their faith and its guidance as a means to votes. Whether we take their statements at face value or not (although they seem so carefully extruded that taking them at face value requires more faith than I, for one, possess) the trotting out of religious belief as a piece of voter fly-paper goes further than similar sticky sentiments on standard political, economic and social issues.

How far astray are these politicians, these Democrats, from the likes of Thomas Jefferson? Jefferson, in his time, when criticized for being faithless, didn’t even bother to rebut the intended insult. Jefferson also wrote the following:

“I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth.”

I’m not condemning Clinton and Obama for having faith, but condemning them for using faith as an implied qualification for office.

From a philosophical perspective, politics is the art and science of determining and implementing the operation of a society. Politicians take office by demonstrating an aptitude for sustaining, protecting and improving society. One could argue that the religious beliefs of American citizens play an important role in our society. And I suppose that would be a difficult argument to negate. But one wants leaders and administrators who can separate religious belief from the practical and pragmatic needs of society. We don’t elect presidents as spiritual guides. And we shouldn’t have to elect someone to the highest office who won’t say things just to win votes.

But back to Kristol for a moment. (Kristol, who hasn’t read much Marx since the early 1908s.) I looked up the preceding context of the Marx quote Kristol gives. It’s this: “[Religion] is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.”

It is clear from this insight that Marx was a true philosopher. According to Kristol, it’s all very well for a German thinker to speak of such things, but not for a presidential candidate. But oh, for a leader who could think like this.

On the rules for being nice.

Today we brought our newborn son home from the hospital. It’s been a week of intense emotion, both joy and anxiety, and not a little tension as a result of stress: I had a run in with another driver (he wanted me to back up so he could park; I wanted him to pull forward so I could get by), a few uncivil words with a nurse (she scolded me because she found the baby uncovered; I felt affronted by her accusation and its tone), and an altercation with a traffic cop (I was sitting in the car when she came up and gave me a ticket; I asked her why she couldn’t have just moved me along).

I like to think of myself as, generally speaking, an easy-going guy, inclined to smooth over difficult situations and defer to others rather than engage. But I guess when I’m tense or pushed past a certain point I do engage.

The NY Times dedicates an editorial to the need for the courts to enforce civility. The Times laments that John Clifford, a commuter and frequent vigilante abuser of his fellow passengers, has once again been acquitted of “assault, disorderly conduct and other charges” after an ugly encounter on a train. The editorial makes a case for better enforcement of good etiquette , but finds Clifford’s bullying policing of his fellow passengers inexcusable.

And in the aftermath of the very public and unsightly divorce of Paul McCartney from Heather Mills, Mills seems to feel no need to apologize for pouring a jug of water over her exes lawyer in court. Mills argues that the lawyer muttered something insulting under her breath and that the dowsing probably did her good.

Society can be defined as a collection of people, but it is really a collection of rules that govern human interactions, some explicit, some implicit. One could say that the degree to which people comply with these rules determines whether the society is functional or dysfunctional, but I would argue otherwise. Rules are fluid, not fixed. A rule that is flouted by the majority or by a significant minority ceases to be absolute. Many commuters talk loudly on cell phones, for instance; they either don’t think about it, or somehow think that they’re not being obnoxious and annoying.

The degree to which a society is functional or dysfunctional depends rather on the quality of respect and empathy that infuses the working rules that govern the society. By working rules I mean the rules that people actually live by, not the ones that people officially agree to. (If a belligerent commuter gets away with abusing his fellow passengers, it matters not what the rule books say.)

New York presents an interesting case study. A place with millions thrust in upon one another, where just getting from A to B can raise the blood pressure and tax one’s patience, a place where people have a hundred opportunities in a day to feel imposed upon or delayed or hard done by in some way. And yet, cordiality tends, most of the time, to win out over rudeness even here. When I’m not stressed I enjoy doing things that New Yorkers don’t expect from their fellow citizens — letting someone pull into traffic, holding a door, offering change, stopping to give directions… I think many others do the same.

But how should we react when others don’t behave well? I’d agree with the Times that behaving rudely and aggressively doesn’t improve matters, but I’d also argue a firm rebuke of rude behavior can only serve to swing the pendulum back toward a more civil society.