Rational Philosophy

UN Ambassador Andrew Young

I am sure that many have cried at some point since 11pm last night. My own tears caught me by surprise. I was emptying the dishwasher this morning as I listened to NPR. Ambassador Andrew Young, the first black ambassador to the UN, (who witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr) was speaking in calm, measured praise of Obama and the weight of the history of Obama’s accomplishment. I’m not black, but in the upsurge of emotion that brought my tears I felt suddenly, immediately aware of what this moment meant historically in a country with such a poor record of racial discrimination, both overt and covert — it was a mixture of relief and joy.

This joy is in part the very pure philosophical joy of a good thing happening, a thing that will change the future. In Andrew Young’s words: “a victory of grace over greed, of vision over violence.”

Can change really happen and if so how?  This is the country that twice elected George W. Bush. Many who voted-in perhaps the worst president in the nation’s history, twice, must have decided to vote for Obama over McCain. So are we a conservative nation simply disillusioned by a lousy president, or are we a nation newly and differently inspired, a changed nation?

Barack Obama Victor

I can’t know the answer. I can only give an opinion based on what I see and hear.  Obama and his campaign team have wrought change by reaching out and engaging people with new ideas. These ideas have rubbed up against old, automated, reactive ways of thinking. Obama has spent the last couple of years asking people why we should see the intractable problems of the country as hopelessly intractable. He’s also stood and overtly and covertly challenged people to find him wanting because of the color of his skin, or the unamericanness of his name, or the power of his rational intellect.

Many failed to meet this challenge. After all 47% of America voted for McCain, or against Obama. That’s tens of millions of people who have proven themselves insusceptible to a force for powerful, positive change.

The world is now a different place. Obama’s skill and insight in his campaign promise great things for his presidency. Thank you, Barack.

John McCain on The Daily Show with John Stewart

Last night, as I watched a TiVo’d John Stewart skewering delegates on the last day of the Republican convention, I wondered what it is about small town values that the Republicans love (but can’t define) and that seems to keep America stuck in the mire of bad politics.

If you didn’t see it, Stewart’s convention crew walked around with microphones asking Republican delegates what ’small town values’ meant to them. With big smiles on their faces and earnest willingness to answer the delegates came up with such laughable answers as “real people, real values,” “traditional marriage,” “fishing,” “church.” (The video is posted on the Daily Show website - highly recommended.)

But even those of us who distrust and disagree with the sentiment with which republicans freight the term, we all seem to understand that the essence of ’small town values’ might mean something genuinely appealing and good. So what is this essence, and how has it become distorted and misused.

Block Island, Rhode Island

I spent the bulk of the summer on Block Island with my family. Block Island is essentially a small town with a lot of tourists. (And these are mostly east-coast tourists from New York and Connecticut.) It’s easy to distinguish the tourists from the islanders. The tourists are in a hurry. They’re often nervous and rude. They lock their cars. They expect to get screwed over. They complain about stuff. The islanders understand that there aren’t that many places to go on the island, and everywhere is pretty close. You can trust people because for the most part, there’s nowhere for them to escape to. You couldn’t steal a car and get it off the island (which is car-accessible only by ferry.)

Block Island is a great lens through which to observe that the essence of small town values means enforced responsibility through enforced community.

It’s a lot easier to be rude or unfair to someone if you don’t know them and if you’ll never see them again and don’t have to rely upon their personal contribution to the community you live in. In a small town, people do know one another and rely upon one another and society functions very much as it has done for millions of years. The inherent rules of small social groups therefore tend to operate without the need for too much overt oversight and enforcement. What’s not to like about that?

But this is the problem: The rest of the country is made up of places where that kind of reinforcement can’t be relied upon. And this is the other part of the problem: Conservative Republicans wrap a whole lot of crap into the concept of small town values that has nothing to do with the core function of a mutually-reliant community (such as traditional marriage, fishing and church.)

And this is why ’small town values’ have become the political ruin of America. So much hog-swill passes for the reasonable subject of informed debate under the auspices of what small town folk care about. Every Republican candidate dives in or gets sucked in to the vortex of endless political distraction of the conservative agenda. And this means the every Democratic candidate gets sucked in, too, for fear of committing political suicide.

Other advanced Western nations don’t waste political time endlessly rehashing abortion statutes, gun control, separation of church and state, the teaching of creationism. ‘Small town values’ are the concrete boots of American politics, and until we lose them we won’t have an effective political process that will allow the nation to move forward and solve the very real problems of war, alternative fuel sources, and climate change.

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On the disjunct between power and wisdom.

I keep coming back to Plato’s words, not because they are perfectly rendered, but because they capture the essence of the idea that power and wisdom seldom coincide:

“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.” - Plato

And then there’s Thomas Jefferson, not generally recognized as a philosopher, but clearly a man who lived and breathed the search for truth:

“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.” - Thomas Jefferson

As we watch the candidates campaign for the presidency I’m most saddened and depressed by how far we remain from Plato’s ideal of power coupled with wisdom. The deeper into the race we get, the more conniving and unwise the rhetoric becomes. (Clinton’s racial politics and her unwise and insincere politics of pandering on the gas tax; McCain’s hard swerve to the right.) The competitive, beauty pageant, micro-focused format of modern politics works against the ideal, of course. Obama seems to be sincere in his desire to break the mold, but he has a long hard road ahead of him and he’s already begun to falter with snipes against Hillary and rash policy promises.

I keep being drawn to stories of good being done by those who’ve quickly made a lot of money and therefore accrued a lot of power while still remembering what it’s like to be one of the have-nots. The Times has a piece on Craig Newmark, of Craigslist, who is one such newly moneyed philanthropist. Newmark, who’s been slow to capitalize on the extraordinary success of his Craigslist idea, even says this about relative wealth: “We know these guys in Google and the eBay guys, and they are not any happier than anyone else. A lot of money is a burden.”

The purist in me reviles against the idea that people who’ve been successful in business should be holding sway with social and philanthropic programs. But why not? Presumably, we’d be able to intervene if one of them turned out to be a nut-job who was out to achieve dubious ends.

Philosophically speaking, if someone has made a lot of money and chooses to spend his or her time and money dedicated to things other than making himself or herself wealthier, it’s more than likely that they’ll be aimed at making positive impact. The concept of philanthropy requires a focus on others over self. A persistent focus on self will tend to have a much less expansive outlook.

Whereas the desire for political power involves a composite desire to achieve sway over others and to be seen to effect change. The desire for political power doesn’t intrinsically have anything to do with effecting positive social change. It should, but it doesn’t.

This points to an intriguing development in the tensions between power and wisdom. Perhaps we will see a period in which politicians are shamed into behaving more responsibly and sincerely by the wealthy philanthropists. Why shouldn’t social improvement occur outside the mainstream political spectrum? And if they do, why shouldn’t this result in more pressure on politicians to focus on doing a job that serves the people rather than serving themselves?

Power rests where it lands. Wisdom, too.

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 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 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 John McCain’s ironic disposition and rodents using rakes.

Times Op-Ed contributor Neal Gabler proposes that the media likes John McCain because he has an ironic outlook on the political process. McCain, with his candor and his self-deprecation and his broad wink at the distorted rigamarole of politics agrees with the default, liberal journalistic “notion that our system (in fact, life itself) is faintly imbecilic.” Gabler describes McCain, with his gleeful cynicism, as a postmodernist candidate.

This is fascinating both in and of itself and more generally. What would an ironically detached president do with his power? How would his sense of irony, of life’s faint imbecility, help or hinder him in running the country?

We get a glimpse perhaps in McCain’s reluctance to support a rigorous bailout of housing lenders and borrowers. McCain lays blame with the lenders for pushing risky loans and with the borrowers for wishful thinking. Bailing them out only rewards their behavior, he says.

His response is aloof, dismissive. He shows a reluctance to engage with the history of the current crisis, the emergence of the shadow banking system to sidestep the kinds of controls that the government put in place as a response to the market crash that precipitated the great depression. Doesn’t the government share a good part of the responsibility for allowing the shadow banking system to emerge without taking steps to regulate it?

Although, this same detachment might be an unusually helpful quality in some situations.

But, more generally, Gabler’s take on McCain points to a philosophical matter of engagement with reality. The ironist perceives the difference between our immediate perception of existence and life, and the larger context of those perceptions. The awareness that ultimately nothing really matters. The central character of Albert Camus’ The Fall (La Chute) comes to realize through a process of self-reflection that everything he’s held dear to him, the whole grand idea of his importance, is nothing but an illusion, an appearance that, ultimately, means nothing. Literature is strewn with such examples of the ironist. Detachment and perspective are essential skills for a novelist, so it is little surprise that this is the case. Hence Gabler’s reference to McCain as a post-modernist candidate.

Gabler surmises that perhaps McCain gained this perspective while a prisoner of war. I would have disagreed with him until I read about the rodents who learned to use a rake.

Dr. Atshushi Iriki, a neuroscientist at the Riken Institute in Tokyo, has trained degus (sociable, Chilean rodents) to use a rake as a tool. By putting the little fellows out of arms reach of their lunch, Iriki coaxed the rodents to take advantage of small rakes so that they could drag the sunflower seeds close enough to eat them. (You can watch a video of the degus at work here.)

Just in itself, this is fascinating. But even more fascinating is the proposal that this kind of learning may lead to molecular and genetic changes in the brain. When Doctor Iriki conducted a similar experiment with Japanese macaques “their brains showed signs of gene activity in a brain region that integrates vision and touch.”

The latent capability for a particular mental aptitude, when prompted and exercized, can lead to a new organization of brain function. This isn’t spelled out in the article, but one presumes that Iriki believes that the animals have not simply learned a new skill, but developed a new capability, one that allows them to process things differently.

And so perhaps Gabler might be right about McCain. It makes sense that being a prisoner of war might lead to the exercising of the functions of the brain that put our existence into perspective. Held captive, treated as insignificant, denied the power of our own self-determination, I can easily see how one would come away with a more ironic perspective on the world.

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On the difference between holding an opinion and acting in accordance with that opinion. When such dissonance is rational and when not.

The media and Barack Obama’s opponents have focused a great deal of attention on Obama’s voting record in the senate. Robin Toner publishes a thoughtful piece today on whether Obama’s voting record necessarily gives a clear indicator of his ability to build consensus and lead effectively. As Toner points out, senators Obama and Clinton have voted the same way almost without exception. But whereas Clinton apparently accedes to the traditional doctrine that progressive or overtly liberal politics can’t gain traction, since the country leans right, Obama presents the perspective that good ideas and sensible policy changes can be popular with anyone who isn’t rigid in his or her thinking. Obama believes that one shouldn’t underestimate the desire of the country to reverse some of the poor management of the past eight years through making pragmatic and valuable policy changes.

The critical point seems to that Obama’s personal opinion will be only one part of his thinking when it comes to guiding policy and decision making. As Obama himself expresses it: “I’m interested in solving problems as opposed to imposing doctrine.”

While the concept of opinion versus action has particular relevance to politics, it transcends politics and appears everywhere that one finds opinions.

To demonstrate this we need only find an example from our own life. Here’s one of mine: My neighbor has a driveway, which, in Brooklyn, is like gold. Unfortunately for him he is so territorial about his driveway that he spends huge amounts of energy and time protecting the driveway entrance — watching out for people who pull up for a minute to load or unload, calling the police when someone parks part way in front of his driveway.

In my opinion, my neighbor’s fixation on his driveway is out of proportion to its real importance. And, in a congested neighborhood, his unwillingness to accept some use of the space for things like loading and unloading by his neighbors strikes me as poor judgment. But, do I act on my opinion? No. I think he’s wrong, but I also know that to oppose his perspective wouldn’t get either of us anywhere. He is firmly entrenched in his opinion. It’s a situation in which any action on my part would be futile or inflammatory.

This kind of dissonance comes up all the time in families, too. We yield. We compromise. We find ways to influence. Or we don’t. If we forever and only acted in accordance with our ideas and opinions we’d soon find ourselves shunned and isolated.

As Obama understands, expressing an opinion is one thing, forcing it on someone is quite another.

There will always be some opinions about which we feel so strongly that we can’t do other than act on them. But there are many times when we can admit that if we insist on imposing our opinion we won’t achieve the best outcome overall. That’s the kind of change Obama seems to be talking about.

 

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My apologies for being off the air for the past 4 days. The servers at the data center that hosts my site had technical problems, in the course of fixing which my site was inadvertently deleted… (Of course, I was highly irrational while my site was down, fearing that it would never be back.)

I have a post to load up from Friday and will resume my regular Monday through Friday daily posting schedule tomorrow.

But, over the weekend, I did find time to load up three YouTube videos of new songs, one of which reprises my feelings about the Bush presidency.

The Ballad of George W. Bush

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On voting in Iowa (and elsewhere).

As has been vividly demonstrated in Kenya in recent days, and as we experienced directly here in the US at the closing stages of the last presidential election, voting often produces more losers than winners. Today is caucus and primary day in Iowa. The presidential voting process begins. But what are we voting for, and why?

In some democratic systems, such as in the UK, people vote for a party rather than a person. Of course, a strong, popular and capable party leader can make a great deal of difference in which party people vote for, but it’s not quite the same as throwing the choice of party leader out to the popular vote. I focus on this difference to help illustrate the point that in a democracy our vote counts toward a particular result — the future government of the nation — and that rationally we should use our vote to try to help bring about the future government that we believe we prefer.

This may seem obvious, but I think it’s not.

Political pundits, the media, political campaign managers and even candidates get confused during the voting process. They become obsessed by the process itself, on what needs to be done to get elected. But getting elected and running a successful government require two very different sets of skills.

The particular skills required to govern the country don’t change much over time: Without integrity, effectiveness and vision things will go awry.

Whether a candidate (or party) claims to have the answer to fixing health care, or saving social security, or countering terrorism really makes no difference if they can’t demonstrate a track record of integrity, effectiveness and vision. Conversely, if a candidate honestly admits that they don’t currently have definite and convincing answers to such issues (how could any one candidate possibly have all the answers?) this demonstrates integrity without necessarily proving them ineffective and lacking in vision.

The pundits, the media, the campaign machine and the candidate make the voter’s task inordinately more difficult by masking the candidate’s key qualities behind a screen of distracting and tear-inducing smoke.

The other part of the voter’s task is to ask himself or herself what kind of government he or she prefers. Again, this seems obvious, but again I would claim it isn’t. If we focus on particular issues we risk losing sight of the big picture. Issues shift. New issues arise. The kind of government we prefer really doesn’t change much over time. That’s why political systems the world over tend to polarize to a greater or lesser degree into the opposing camps of conservative and liberal, republican and democrat, right wing and left wing, fascist and socialist.

The kind of government we prefer tends to fall somewhere along this spectrum. If the party we would normally vote for has swung too far one way, perhaps we feel a swing back in the other direction is called for. But fundamentally we tend to prefer a government that aligns better with our ideological bent.

To those in Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida and across the country I say, forget the hoopla, look past the mud that’s been slung, dig into the record of the candidates on matters of integrity, effectiveness and vision, and vote for a leader who lacks none of these and for a government whose ideology promises to set the country on a course that you will feel happy about four years from now.

I make no apology for belaboring the point that George Bush, who so clearly lacks integrity and effectiveness and who’s vision has been so muddled and ill-founded that it’s mired the country in a dire war, set back international relations thirty years, hobbled the country’s finances, and introduced a deplorable set of incursions on basic human rights, was elected to the highest office in the country not once but twice. We can only hope that this year’s voting process turns the tide.

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