Rational Philosophy

On a stroke victim’s experience of nirvana, Supreme Court justices’ rendering surprising decisions, and a father’s $45K investment in his son’s self-motivation.

I watched The Simpsons movie over the weekend, which uses the twin drays of pollution and global warming to help drive its plot. I thought it must have been during the Simpsons movie that I heard a witticism about an endangered species being one simply less able to survive, but my daughter corrected me; David Letterman cracked the joke about the great blue heron when he hosted the Piedmont bird impersonators on a recent show.

Which is a long way around (what do you expect?) to introducing the subject of my curiosity today — exceptions. An endangered species might be considered an exception in that it is one of a minority of the species on the planet doomed to imminent extinction, but maybe another way of looking at this is that every species is endangered, we’re just each on our own time-lines.

Other exceptions:

A stroke victim experienced an informed nirvana after her stroke disabled the egotism and analytical dominance of her left brain. Doctor Jill Bolte Taylor, now recovered but having learned a new skill, can still tap into the peaceful, euphoric oneness that her stroke foisted upon her. Unusual in her pragmatic perspective on the sensation, Dr. Taylor describes her experience as a sudden understanding the relative and all-connected reality of her existence. But since we’d need a stroke, and a lucky stroke, to get to the same euphoric sensation, what use is Dr. Taylor’s unique affliction?

The Supreme Court rendered two surprisingly non-conservative decisions today in favor of workers versus employers. The particular details are less pertinent to this post than their out-of-wackness.

And lastly, I’ve written variously before on the value of education as an end in itself. I was just talking about this yesterday to my wife’s aunt’s mother (such are family gatherings) who made the pertinent point that the value of an education is to teach one how to learn. But today I read the compelling story of a man who bribed his son to apply himself in school by promising him a Shelby 427 Cobra. (Those kids who’ve been duped into performing for $50, read no further…)

Alright, so what gives? We like evolution, survival of the fittest, but we love the endangered species. We pride ourselves on our mastery of language, on our analytical heft, but our jaws drop as we think about freedom from ego and stress. We hate the conservatism of the court with such vehemence that we try to read conservative subplots into its more liberal decisions. And we don’t believe in the value of financial incentives in encouraging our children to learn, but we wonder how we’re going to pay for the Shelby Cobra…

Exceptions.

Does an exception tell us that the rule is wrong?

Not necessarily. I think they perhaps give us a new overarching rule that we should be careful of absolutism. We love to categorize. Categorizing has been such useful skill for the conscious mind that it has become a ready defense against uncertainty. In some cases perhaps too ready.

Dr. Taylor’s experience tells us that we may have a very different perception of reality if we could find ways to counter the less helpful strategies of the left brain.

The Supreme Court justices remind us that we can’t necessarily judge people by their past actions and ideas.

And the father who bought his son a Shelby Cobra for making the honor role thumbs his nose at those of us who hove to the higher ground of learning for the sake of learning…

Clouds over Olympic competition in Beijing, mammoth trading fraud in Paris and synthesized life.

Apparently smog and pollution levels in Beijing, host to this year’s Olympics, are nearly five times above World Health Organization standards for safety. Track cyclist Colby Pearce saw smog floating inside the velodrome in Beijing. He developed bronchitis, he said, because of air pollution. Fears of the dire effects of pollution on Olympic athletes run so high that the U.S. Olympic Training Center has been developing strategies to combat the performance-diminishing effects of smog, and a special mask to filter out most of the worst pollutants. Here’s the odd thing: As the U.S. and other countries have worked intensely on protecting their athletes from smog and pollution, they have protected their findings as fiercely as an athlete protects his lead in a race. Where is the Olympic spirit? Do we want athletes to win just because they’ve had access to a $25 face mask that poorer countries couldn’t afford to research and develop? How does this make for a level playing field?

Unfortunately, an early version of a NY Times story about massive fraud at Société Générale, complete with a couple of splendidly portentous quotes from a bank representative, has already been revised and those quotes removed. I’ll try to paraphrase: a bank spokesman referred to his state of serenity; he was very calm about the loss of $7.1 billion, he said, because it had been through the act of a clever individual and didn’t reflect badly on the bank’s fundamental solidity and stability… Hmmm. The most recent version of the story reveals a little less bullishness on the bank’s part. It tells of the dismissal of four others — including its head of global equity and derivatives trading, Luc François. And the bank’s chairman describes the debacle as “a very grave loss.” The rogue trader is “on the run.”

While the loss of $7 billion or so interests me, this wasn’t the amount that the trader stole, simply the amount that he put the bank in the hole for when it had to extricate itself from his fraudulent transactions. I found myself wanting to know how much money the trader (Jerome Kerviel, right) actually got away with. After the first few million, is it really worth it? And, further, if you have a job as a trader, aren’t you doing pretty well in the first place? (And, if this guy applied for a job at your organization would you hire him?)
Like many things in life, it seems that if you’re going to cheat you should at least be rational about it.

Far be it from me to give advice to those who want to defraud a bank, but surely it’s not rational to take positions that can add up to losses of billions of dollars. With numbers this big, eventually someone will notice, even a smug bank bigwig.

Back to Beijing: Surely the International Olympic Committee should be coordinating research that will protect the health and competitive effectiveness of Olympic athletes. Couldn’t the IOC fork out $25 for face masks, give advice on pre-games training, etc.? I know that world-class athletes have had a bad rap recently for gaining unfair advantages through the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but isn’t it rational that if you want to win you want to win on your merits not because you’re from a wealthier nation?

In what’s becoming something of a rationalphilosophy series on the risks of messing with things natural, I have to mention the success of scientists in synthesizing life from its constituent chemicals. Part of me rejoices at this achievement. If scientists can create life from chemicals then the supposed mystery of life’s appearance on earth gets a step closer to being demystified. That’s a good thing. But synthesized life could also mean the end of life on earth, or at least human life, unless we’re very careful.

I just got back from an evening out with a friend (hi, Neil). I was discussing these stories and he made the point that people just do some crazy, irrational things. I think that’s right. From the scientists synthesizing life because they can, to the trader defrauding the bank because he can, to the athletes and their training bodies seeking a smog advantage because they can, people just do stuff. I guess we are organisms that just do stuff. Being rational is kind of a new thing for us from an evolutionary perspective and often we find it hard to overcome the excitement of just doing stuff because we can…