# 66 on my, 99 Life Tips–A List is: Logic is a useful scaffolding to climb the tower of truth, but it is not the tower, and will not always result in what is true.
I mean here that logic is a framework and not substance. It is a system that is useful for testing rational statements. But it relies on the inherent limitations of language and sometimes its champions forget that language, whether written or spoken, only represents the thing or idea represented and is not the thing or idea itself. If Language is limited, and if Logic relies on Language, then it follows, logically, that Logic has its limits.
So, I can build up an impressive array of premises and definitions about Hydrogen and Oxygen and how combined they form a substance that can exist in three different states depending upon temperature. And when finished I still won’t be able to drink it. The truth of water, experientially, evades both language and logic in the abstract.
There are those who enjoy creating syllogisms that are absurd like:
If God is all-powerful, then He can create something impossible for Him to lift.
But if He did, then He wouldn’t be all-powerful since there would be something He could not do…
These word games use logic not in the attempt to discover truth, but to camouflage it.
Logic doesn’t admit the consideration of all variables that might affect a premise all times. Contexts change. So not all truth boils down to binary, true/false declarations with predictable, repeatable outcomes.
That’s a good noodle-baker. And it provided the intellectual fodder for my headline, which has the same logical problem. If the first clause (“Logic Has Its Limits”) is true, then the entire headline is false, if the first clause is false, the entire headline is true. Either way, the scaffolding collapses.
So logic is useful within its limits. But let’s remember logic has its limits. It will not as a necessity result in what is true. And in the minds of the disingenuous, it becomes a rhetorical tool to go the opposite direction.
The second quote is an enlargement upon a clause of Proverbs 23:7, which says:
”As he thinks in his heart, so is he…”
~ Proverbs 23:7
We Live The Lives We’re Willing To Live
My essay, Your Will Cannot Control Your Emotions…, focuses on what the will cannot do. The focus of this piece is what you can choose to do. You can change your life. You can change how you feel. But to change how you feel, you must either change how, or what, you’re thinking.
Greg, are you saying that my life and my emotional condition are the products of my thoughts?
Yes, dear Reader. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I wouldn’t expect you to take me at my word. After all, who am I to you?
But please don’t let the fact that I am unknown to you keep you from hearing these truths. Perhaps you stumbled this post at a time when you have ears to hear exactly what it is you need to hear.
Each of us lives the life we’re willing to live. Period. You woke up today in a life your current thinking has created for you. Our inner narrator acclimates to, and perpetuates our script. We dutifully play out our scenes. Believing ourselves to be free, we fail to recognize that too large a percentage of our lives is spent responding and reacting to stimuli over which we exercise little to no control. We feel ourselves going through the motions of a life somehow not our own.
To Be Free Is To Think
And even if we feel bad about it, we too quickly grow accustomed to it. Perhaps we don’t like the direction our life has taken. But if we never stop to think, not just reflexively respond, our lives will not change. The most free thing a person can do is think for themselves. All freedom blooms from that first, most basic, unchainable freedom.
But if you allow your mind and attention to be either captured, or misdirected, you’re giving that freedom away, or using it in a way that will do you no good. Unless you learn to be awake, aware, and not on auto-pilot, your life won’t change. How could it? Who will change it? Who will change your emotions or your circumstances, if not you?
These are psychological, physiological, philosophical, and spiritual truths. There are volumes of writings that prove my assertions, inasmuch as these ideas can be proven.
Again, I say, if you want to change how you feel, you must either change how, or what, you’re thinking. The surest, and only way, to get a different output, is to change the inputs.
Your Thinking Creates Your Life and Your Feelings About It
You will never feel good while thinking about what’s bad. You will never find solutions while focusing on the problems. You feel bad because you spend more time looking at what is wrong in your life and world than what is good and right in it. You find no solutions because you don’t allow yourself to imagine what your life would look like fixed, absent the problems that plague it. Without a vision of a better state of affairs, how do you know which direction to go? How do you know which means to use, which levers to pull, which variables to change, to get to that imagined result?
Change in your feelings and circumstances may not happen overnight. It may take a lot of work. There may be false starts and resets, but if you keep thinking of the life you want, and the steps you can take to get there, you will one day wake up in a different life those different thoughts created. And you’ll feel fundamentally different for the entire journey.
I suspect you’re feeling a tiny flame of inspirational hope that things can be different. That you can feel better about your life. Yes, you can. Fan that tiny flame. It will be hard, but worthwhile work, to change your patterns, change your thinking, and transform your life into the one you actually want to be living. You can do it. You’re the only one who can. You hold the keys.
What a beauty. Listen closely, you can hear it’s trying to say something. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
It occurred to me this morning that you cannot lie to a tree. Please allow me the attempt to explain.
Since beginning The Overstory, by Richard Powers, trees have become my heroes among creation. I know that seems strange, but my fascination has only grown as I marvel at their presence on this planet and I ponder what they are up to. As one of the characters in the book might say, ”What they do?”
The more I learn about them, and even as I try to share what I’m learning, the more I realize that my learning is taking me backwards so that I can properly start at zero. My preconceptions have to be shattered and laid aside. They are obstacles. I am like a guitar student coming to a Master. ”I’d like to learn to play guitar,” I say. ”Show me what you can do,” says he. I begin to strum through chords I’ve learned, pleased to show off a few rudimentary elements. ”Stop!” he shouts, before I complete 4 bars. ”This is not guitar! We will need to unlearn these mistakes before we can begin.”
This is how it is with trees. To borrow a concept once more from the book,
”You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice.”
The Overstory, p. 439. From Adam Appich, a character who is a psych professor.
Thinking you understand trees, you don’t see them. I mean, you see the shapes, but you don’t see them. It’s the same with the people you race each morning to get to work. You see them just enough to avoid hitting their cars when you change lanes. But you don’t have time to see the people. You don’t have time to look. You understand them. They are going to work just like you are. Knowing that tidbit is enough to stop the quest for any deeper enlightenment.
You see trees about as much as you see people in these cars. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
A weird thought that just wouldn’t go away
I was thinking on these things when I realized that you cannot lie to a tree. I know, that’s a weird thought to have. But you cannot lie to a tree in the same way that you cannot lie to God. Lies will not impact either one. They will remain unmoved, unbent, unbowed, unswayed. The wind will move a tree more than your lies will. Go ahead and try to prove me wrong.
Which of your lies will either impact or impress a tree? (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
I find that so satisfactory to contemplate. You can senselessly cut down a tree. Or you can treat it like a cash crop. You can scorch it with acid rain and blight. You can foolishly clear out the undergrowth that makes up its nutrient bed. But you cannot lie to a tree. In every conceivable way, a tree is above you. It is unmoved. It is unflappable. A tree is nothing but living, breathing, branching, spreading, sharing truth. No liars need apply.
Juxtapose that with what we call civilization. On the one hand, a forest is a collection of beings so willing to give and receive truth from one another that they become one thing. A Douglas Fir cannot fool an Aspen that it is something else. The Aspen does not pretend to be a Maple. The Oak has leaves that sample and absorb the off-gassed, chemical condensates of its neighbors, and shares with them in turn. Every tree in the wood shares carbon with every other tree underground through the mycelia of their root structures, assisted by fungi, the most un-heralded, unseen, world-class mediators and facilitators of the planet. The network of sharing is so complete, so entwined, that the forest becomes an organism in its own right. Trees have nothing to gain from pretentious self-centeredness. They have everything to gain from being exactly what they are.
This collection of varieties alone proves the social superiority of trees to humans. There is no murder, no isms, no inequality…makes ya think. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
The veneer of civilization and culture is sophisticated fabrication
By contrast, human civilization is hardly anything but lies. Lies that appear in facebook posts, instagram stories, and snaps. Tweeted lies. Spoken lies. Documented lies. How rare to find someone not trying to be more than they are, or not trying to be someone else – or wishing they were. We drive cars we can’t afford to pretend we have more money. We mortgage our lives to dwell in houses that are shoddily and hastily built; they have no architectural finesse, or aesthetic beauty, or soul whatsoever. They do fit neatly on the 3rd of an acre lot sandwiched between two neighbors you smile and wave at, but whose names you do not know. But for God’s sake can they just please keep their lawn mowed?
No, human culture is a polished veneer of appearances. Its strength is not deep connection, but deep deception. You are more deeply committed to your favorite celebrity (who you will never meet) than to your neighbor. We cannot share life the way trees do because we cannot be trusted to share equally. I wish I had the talent to paint in words the absurdity of the tree-equivalent of Elon Musk, or Marc Zuckerburg, or any one of the despicable Kardashians.
This? This is the height of human civilization? Please! Give me a forest! (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
Here’s a thought: If you picture the canopy of trees in a forest having an average height that represents their individual net worth, the average height would be 88* feet tall. The Elon Musk tree would tower 23,525,920** feet above the average height of the forest. That’s a large number. Correction. It’s an obscene number. It is twenty-three million, five-hundred twenty-five thousand, nine-hundred twenty-three feet above the eighty-eight foot ceiling of the forest average. In other words 800 Mt. Everests stacked on one another, or 800 times higher than the cruising altitude of a commercial jet.
See anything sticking 23 million feet above this? No? Didn’t think so. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
That Elon tree aberration is 4455.66 miles above the average tree. That’s a mutation! (That is farther than the distance from New York, New York to Anchorage, Alaska). The Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Buffett trees would also tower way above the ”average height” canopy. Can you even imagine what that would look like from space?
[This deserves a WaitButWhy illustration from Tim Urban. Like the ones in this excellent piece on AI. (C’mon Tim, discover trees!)]
Trees aren’t greedy – They’re more honorable than people
No tree would be so ashamedly greedy. Humans have no such limitations on either shame or greed. Trees are way more honorable than people. Trees exist to scrub poison out of the atmosphere, turn it into biomass and energy, and give it back in the form of life to everything else on the planet. The immorally rich exist to squeeze life out of everyone ”beneath” them, use them for their own ends, and excrete the poison of selfishness with its envy, lust, and competition, all while being loved and praised and enamored for doing so. Talk about insanity writ large…
You will live your entire life and maybe know one or at most two other people. I mean really know them. But you will be coldly calculating to make sure you get as much as you give in every transaction with everyone else. You will cultivate a persona for work, for your kids, for your spouse. Then you will put on a face for the public at large. You will go to church and put on a religious face for the members, and for God. While there, you will have the uneasy feeling that God sees through your piety. He sees beneath the veneer. The degree to which you allow Him to see, will be the degree to which you experience the unfathomable bliss of love undeserved.
A classroom for a better way
Go to the woods. The trees will release pheromones to bribe you into carrying pollen for them, or maybe just to get you to stand nearby and breathe for a while. But go there and tell them your stories, and show them your curated life with its glamorous photos of the vacation that will take you ten times longer to pay for than the time you spent enjoying it. Show them your checkbook register, or your stock portfolio.
I’m just here to learn. I have a feeling there’s so much you can teach me. I hope I’m not too late; for your kind, or for mine. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)
Go to the woods and look. See if you can spot a tree trying to seduce its neighbor. See if you find one trying to impress. Find one that is hustling its neighbor, or conning it. Especially, look for the trees trying to oppress and exploit and abuse and use their surrounding, neighbor trees. You know, the ”hard-working” trees just trying to climb the ladder and get ahead.
You won’t find any. No, they just stand still, wave in the breeze, reach and stretch, and branch, and take in what’s there, and give back to everything around them, and practice being invisible.
The Takeaway: I learned these truths by reading fiction
You cannot lie to a tree. But you can lie to yourself and to others. You can tell yourself there’s nothing to learn here. Trees aren’t people, you say. No, thank God, they’re not. I learned all these things about trees, their essential truths, their fundamental importance, and the dire emergency they truly face, by reading a work of fiction. That’s the power that fiction has to reveal truth and change lives!
NOTE:
*The dataset for tree heights found the average height was 87.6 feet (88′).
** Elon Musk’s net worth is approx. $185B, the average American net worth is the whopping, $692K (which seems very high). 185B/692K=267,341 (this is how many times more Musk’s net worth is than the avg. If $692K = 88’, then $185B = 88 x 267,341 = 23,526,008’ (the height of the Musk tree) 23,526,008 – 88 = 23,525,920’ (The height in feet of Musk’s tree above the canopy average height)
“I was blind all the time I was learning to see” ~ Grateful Dead, Help On The Way
I’m listening to the Audible version of The Overstory during my daily walks. Yesterday, I heard the Bullhorn of Truth in the dialogue of two characters on page 430:
”What keeps us from seeing the obvious?”
Douglas puts his hand to the brass bull’s horn. ”And? What does?”
”Mostly other people.”
[Before proceeding with my remarks. Here is a fun tidbit. I just pulled a bookmark randomly from a pack I received from Amazon a couple days ago. Each has a quote from a famous person. The one I selected (without peeking) to mark the passage I quoted above, says:
”Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.” ~ Steve Jobs]
These aren’t exactly the same ideas, but are next of kin. Other people influence what we pay attention to, and therefore what we see and hear. Their opinions hold the power to silence and shelve our own opinions.
I could spend a month searching the psychological literature to find supports for those sentences above. I’m not going to do that. They are self-evident to me. I’m sold. I just wanted to package it up for your consideration.
To look below the surface, you have to know there’s more to see
None of us can see everything. We have to be selective. And we are constructed in a way that we cannot simultaneously see what is in front of, and behind, us. Unlike an owl, which can spin its head around, or a fly, with eyes that allow 360° vision, we can look in only one direction at a time. And often, we don’t really know what we’re looking at. To truly see a thing requires some idea of how much there is to look for, does it not? Who decides where we look? Who tells us how long to look, or much to look for? Who tells us what to pay attention to? Where do these impulses come from, if not other people?
(For God’s sake do not get me started about the algorithms Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms use to restrict what you see and hear about in order to capture your attention for sale to advertisers. The truth asserted above is the basis of their business models, by virtue of which, they are the richest companies in the history of the world.)
Who have you permitted to determine what you get to see? And who decides what you get to say about it? There is more going on friend, than the carefully curated world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you to the truth. (with my tip of the cap to Morpheus’ quote in The Matrix.)
How do you know what you know? Did you discover it by thinking, or were you simply told?
As I work my way through the excellent essay, Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, I am experiencing anew a particular delight , common in my grade school years, of registering how the critical, skeptical, rational mind approaches a question. I am thrilled (which is exactly the correct word) to observe and follow Berlin thinking his way through complex questions about the nature of liberty, more than I am by any conclusions drawn.
I distinctly remember this feeling when very young; when I was first learning how to think, and not merely what to think. So much of my formal education, even at the college level, consisted in being told what, and not how, to think. (But that’s another topic).
It is a rare treat to discover a writer or speaker with the mental and psychological discipline to use his mind when approaching a question, and not be used by it. One who employs his mental faculties to see a problem the way one utilizes a magnifying glass, or a microscope, or an MRI machine. Neither the glass, the scope, nor the imaging machine impose preference upon the subject matter. They simply observe it, (but at increasingly higher resolution, depth, and granularity of detail).
Too often, presuppositional prejudices in the mind are a blinding filter, canceling some of the information needed for the fullest view. When the search for evidence supporting a pet theory or ideological point of view usurps the place of pure truth as the ultimate pursuit of inquiry, the resulting conclusions are always suspect. Berlin’s treatment of the subject of Liberty doesn’t fall prey to petty bias. It is an exemplary reminder of how bifurcated issues should be approached by the intellectually honest.
Here is a particularly thought-provoking quote from the essay:
”[From the standpoint of Liberty,] ‘Pagan self-assertion’ is as worthy as ‘Christian self-denial’ All errors which [a man] is likely to commit against advice and warning, are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to what they deem his good.”
Some statements are worth reading at least twice. (The bracketed words are mine, for context). Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Can you deduce what Berlin is asserting? He is not saying that Paganism is as worthy as Christianity. He is making no comparative argument about their respective virtues at all. He is referencing the respective practitioners solely in terms of their equal use of liberty in choosing to act for themselves without outside interference or coercion. Their respective liberty to choose their own path is equal. He is making no claims regarding the comparative value of what they choose.
For many readers, seeing the terms ‘Pagan’ and ‘Christian’ in such proximal juxtaposition, will cloud the mind with prejudice so that the the point being addressed is missed entirely. And for some readers, the juxtaposition may reveal a different type of prejudice. That only those practicing socially, culturally, religiously approved liberties, should be allowed to do so; while those believing or acting contrary to the mainstream view must have their choices curtailed by restrictive laws to protect them from harming themselves, or polluting the mainstream.
What do you think about the following questions? Remember – What you think is determined by How you think – so try to imagine your mind as a magnifying glass looking at each question afresh just to see all that is there to be discovered.
Is it better to A) erect a barricade of laws – out of benevolence – to prevent a man from committing errors that my harm himself, thus prohibiting him the liberty to do so, or B) allow the man liberty to commit errors and suffer the natural consequences?
Which is the greater evil to the man in question?
What are the ramifications of either course?
What if the potential self-harm has the possibility of becoming public harm?
Is this the most clearly revealed dividing line between private and public acts?
How far-reaching might the ripples of consequence extend for either choice?
How large – or how intrusive – a barricade of restriction might be needed if A is selected?
These questions and their answers are central to freedom. They form the heart, not only of Libertarian political philosophy, but circulate throughout both Conservative and Liberal ideologies. We all seem to share the idea that there is something wrong with allowing another to determine what is good for us, and then by force of law to constrain us to their, and not our own, ”choice”. Such an enforced ”choice” is no choice at all, in any normal sense of the word. Stop to think how many laws and policies have just this element of intrusive interference as their foundation.
These are things to think about, Dear Reader. These ideas make up the substance of the great questions of morality; and as politics is merely a branch, or social outworking of moral philosophy, we owe it to ourselves to get it right. And to do so, we will need to stop listening so intently to those voices on either side telling us what to think, rediscover the inward joys of how to think, and then get busy with it.
Looks easy but may be the hardest thing of all for any of us to do…Think for ourselves.
Is it possible that the most difficult thing for a human is to have an independent thought?
It has been said that everyone is the unconscious exponent of some dead philosopher or other. In other words, we’re all drinking somebody’s Kool-Aid. Every idea you have has been borrowed. Every belief inculcated. From birth, each new idea is absorbed brick by brick from the people around you. This continues on into school, high school, college, books you choose, media you consume.
If true, then what we Americans like to think of as individualism is just a certain species of social confirmation theory. In other words, we reinforce (and are reinforced by) the ideas we and our adoptive tribe subscribe to. In too many ways we are automatons, conditioned to thinking, saying, and doing what we’ve been reinforced by our preferred social group to think, say, and do. (In the military for instance, independent thought is not a value, it is rebellion.) What would your friends think, or your ”followers” if you happen to voice an idea outside the accepted orthodoxy of your circle? So you don’t. You want to be accepted. You want to fit. You want to belong.
To push that idea further, that means there are no true individuals in the classical sense; that being who is truly independent, non-reliant, un-attached, un-molded, un-shaped and unique.
Certainly not you if you’re reading this. You’re dependent on someone even for the ability to read. Somebody else, long ago, turned these squiggles into a language that you were taught to speak and read. Your brain sees the squiggles and with no effort on your part, converts the shapes to meaning. You didn’t do ANY of that for yourself.
And the squiggles appear on magical virtual paper in front of your eyes. They aren’t carved in stone, or painted onto papyrus, or inscribed on vellum, or scratched into bark. Unless you developed the technology to display abstract language on a screen using only ones and zeroes, some silicon, glass, and light supplied by electricity. You are dependent on those who did. You are this moment dependent upon those who keep the electricity flowing to your device of choice for reading this. Mic drop.
It is very difficult to escape ethnocentrism. We believe the culture we are born into is the best one. This is probably not unique to Americans, but it may afflict us to a worse degree. America’s greatest export by volume, is our culture, or at least the pop-Art aspects of it. But is one’s birth culture really the ”best” one? Or is it merely familiar?
But wait, Americans aren’t satisfied with being simply American, are we? You need a jersey to wear. Red, or blue for you? And you need a code to follow. We divide along dogma and credo down to the granular level. And be mindful not to step on the cracks of separation, or you’ll get labeled, ”other”.
It fascinates me that in Japanese there is no word for ”individualism”. A deeper dive removes some surprise since they have a culture shaped by Shintoism with its profound veneration and appreciation for ancestors. A Japanese citizen is not too proud to acknowledge the help they’ve received to become what they have become. To think they’d done so on their own would be a sacrilege.
In America, individualism is a religion in its own right. I am more convinced than ever, that it is a form of cult-like psychosis. There is a willful denial of the interwoven, inter-dependent nature of our lives. What a particularly Orwellian brand of ”group-think”, in which the adherents ludicrously claim ”individualism”, while parroting the same words, wearing the same clothes, supporting the same issues, flying the same flags. Oh, right, individuals…I see.
I find ironic humor in the fact that so many professors of independence and individualism make their claims via the megaphone of billion-member social networking platforms. Kinda belies the claim, doesn’t it?
Americans have arrived at a cultural, social, and political inflection point at which we must determine if we are flexible enough to allow for a plurality of viewpoints. Are we going to continue to splinter and fragment? Are we going to wage the RL version of Battle Royale against one another? Is your group so sure of its righteousness that it is willing to go to war with a differing group? Even a war of words using the weapons of vilification, condescension, and ridicule is counter-productive and mutually destructive. Are you that certain you can do without them?
The idea of America is quite literally coming apart at the seams. I’m not unique in believing this house is too divided to stand. Can we recover? Maybe. If we’re willing to embrace the ideals that the country was founded upon. If we adamantly reject all disinformation from whatever the source. If we hold crooked and lying politicians on both sides accountable. If we look more for similarities than for differences in one another.
I think in the next few decades, not just in America, but globally, it will take all of us, working together, pulling together, mutually dependent, and mutually benefitting to stay alive on this planet and help it recover before we go extinct ourselves.
This planet we ride on can do just fine without any of us, and it will recover speedily once we are gone. It doesn’t need us. Consider that.
I have seasonal allergies. My body responds to pollen as a pathogen. It attacks it as harmful and invasive. Pollen is certainly not a pathogen. It is the substance of fecundity and life. There is something wrong with me, not the pollen, or the trees, and other flora producing it.
Just because this stuff attacks me, doesn’t mean its bad and I should attack it. It’s doing its job, the problem is mine.
In our melting pot society, different cultures and ideas have always melded and blended, and coalesced and cooperated. Our cross-pollination is what makes us unique among the roster of nations. Differences of opinion, experience, history, and perspective should not be treated as pathogens! They shouldn’t be attacked, but embraced, understood, mined for truth, and winnowed for better ideas.
The differences between us are the pollen of a society fertilized and pregnant with possibility. If you’re allergic, it’s likely there is something wrong with you.
Americans by nature are allergic to concepts that challenge “rugged individualism”, but we can grow up now. It’s ok. There’s plenty of Kleenex to go around.
And we might as well start with the idea that none of us is really all that independent. None of us is really as individualistic as we might puff ourselves up to be. Lean in. Here’s a tissue.
If posed with the question, ‘what is a Christian?’ would you have a ready answer?
How about, ‘what is a Muslim’?
And if asked, ‘what is a Republican?’ do you know what the answer is?
Now, the million dollar question, ‘what is an American’?
Your brain has already provided you with immediate conceptions as you read them. You may not have been ready to articulate your answers, but you have general ideas, nonetheless. Did you notice whether you thought first of what is (the positive, inclusive attributes), or what isn’t (those attributes that exclude). That may be revelatory to you.
With regard to at least one of them, perhaps your instinctive response is ”I don’t know.”
Kudos to you, if you’re that honest.
Upon reflection, you will no doubt consult your experiences and familiarity with each of the designations. You may have definitions in mind for each of them that are accurate and factual, gleaned from study, observation, and participation. You may have answers that are based on hearsay, or bias. Your opinions may be entirely formed by what you’ve heard others say about Christians, Muslims, and Republicans, and Americans, and you’ve adopted those views as your own.
Regardless of what your answers are, can you be confident that your answer would be agreed upon by any member of each of the groups in question?
In other words, when you answer ‘what is a Christian?’, can you be certain that all persons who identify as Christians would agree with you? If not, does that reveal anything about:
A) the accuracy of your answer? and,
B) the definability of the terms?
What about your answer regarding Muslims? Republicans? Americans?
It is very conceivable that there are no objectively correct answers for any of the three questions you’re asked to consider in this brief essay. You no doubt have an answer. It may differ wildly from someone else’s. And even if you self-identify as a member of one or more of the groups above, others within that same group may have drastically different ideas and answers for what a member of the group is.
Generalities differ from specific cases, as Greatest Common Factors differ from Least Common Denominators, by being more inclusive.
Are there any objective facts about the groups that can be established and agreed upon? Not once we go too granular.
We are living in an age of heightened and aggravated political and cultural tribalism. We seek the emotional comfort of ideological kin. Even if it is the false-comfort of lies. We are willing to factor out one another based on least common denominators, creating such a climate of disinformation, distrust and division, that objectivity may be ready for the grave.
If you believe it’s important to think about things; if it’s important to have reasons as a basis for your beliefs; if it’s important to abandon ”Absolutism” to God alone, with everyone else, including yourself, being prone to error and ignorance, then you and I are agreed.
Learning takes courage. It is humbling to admit that you do not know. And it is impossible to learn what you don’t want to know. Learning affects the ego with the possibility that you have been mistaken about a subject you thought you knew, or, it can introduce facts and concepts you’ve never heard before. Uncomfortable, unfamiliar, challenging truths make us confront our biases. Since it is the accumulation of knowledge and experiences that make you, YOU, a metamorphosis akin to an ego-death might be needed to emerge as the new, more enlightened version of YOURSELF.
Learning also requires intelligence, which can be defined as an aptitude for grasping truths. The greater this aptitude, the greater the chance that learning occurs even without specific intentionality. To be sure, there are very smart people who use their intelligence, not in pursuit of truths to grasp, but in devising systems for denying truth and for creating, protecting and propagating lies. To me, using intelligence this way is the essence of evil.
Rather, a good life is built around using intelligence to pursue and discover truth, and once found, to act on it. If a new discovery forces a change of belief, or a change of direction, so be it. How many ideas in your life are you absolutely certain about? How certain are you that you’ve been exposed to all the truth you’ll ever need? It is written that, “Every man’s ways are right in his own eyes.” But that verse is a warning that absolute certainty is a luxury reserved for a very limited handful of truths.
Seeking out, learning, and acting on truth sounds good until you realize it forces you to act like an intellectual nomad. Your concept of self must be fluid and dynamic, as new facts overturn previously staked out beliefs. So, the learner lives in an intellectual tent that can be quickly taken down, moved, set up elsewhere, maybe enlarged, maybe subtracted from. Brick and mortar rigidity is unhelpful here.
There is a kind of false security that comes from past knowledge. But tradition must never become a replacement for truth. Truth can move with us into the present and will guide us into the future. So let those who claim to be learners be courageous and determined to tear down any house of lies they encounter. Ruthlessly reject untruths, falsehoods, and biases as soon as new facts and new information is discovered. Pitch your tent upon newly learned truth.
There is nothing inherently holy about Capitalism. There is no mention of it in the Bible. Nor is it mentioned in the Constitution, by the way.
There is nothing that codifies it as the economic system that should be adhered to at all times, at all costs, in every arena of economic policy.
This is a good thing, because it would be difficult to find a wealthy enough financier, a Capitalist, to finance and own and maintain the nation’s Army, for instance.
And even if we could find someone that wealthy, would it be wise and good to see if the same individual, say Jeff Bezos, or Warren Buffett, would like to own the Navy, too? The Air Force? Maybe we could farm that out to a corporation, like Apple, say. All the planes would look pretty cool with that iconic piece of bitten fruit on the wings.
And who gets to own the nation’s Police forces? Mark Zuckerburg? Facebook S.W.A.T. units, nice. (They already know everything there is to know about the suspects).
Who should own the US Postal Service? Maybe switch Bezos to this. Amazon’s good at delivery.
Who wants to own the Firefighting services? Elon Musk? All-electric, self-driving fire trucks. I can see it.
EMTs?
Should all First Responders be owned by the same corporation, or individual?
I’m being purposely sarcastic, ironic, and satirical.
Think. About. It.
The military (all branches), and the first responders (all types, except volunteers) are purely socialist entities. Yes, I said it. Our military framework is socialist. It is government owned and taxpayer funded.
The Government, the State, owns the ”means of production”. It owns the forts, naval bases, and air fields. It owns the tanks, bombers, aircraft carriers, tomahawk cruise missiles, F-22’s. The State pays the wages of all the service members, too, via taxation of citizens. It’s about as purely Socialist as the socialist model will allow.
We wouldn’t want it: Any. Other. Way.
There are many instances that are similar. Care to look?
If your neighbor’s house catches fire, the roaring flames threatening your house, do you want the firemen to show up, and a salesman jump out with a contract to negotiate to see how much money they can squeeze out of him before they uncoil the hoses and hook up to the fire hydrant?
And while you’re thinking that over…who owns that fire hydrant and all the underground piping all the way back to the water tower or reservoir? Who owns the tower? I’ll be damned, I believe the State does, in the form of local government, public utilities departments.
There’s radical socialism all around us! Who knew???
Every person, myriad times throughout each day makes decisions about what to say or do from the menu of options available to them at the time of the choice.
This bears unpacking a bit. You are reading this right now. You could have chosen to do something else instead. But reading this showed up on the menu of choices available to you and you chose to do so. This process was in play before you knew about it, and it will continue now that you do know about it.
Not all options are available to choose at all times. Neither of us can fly to the moon, or even across the room under our own power, for instance, even if we desired to do so. And, to be certain, there is a catalogue of historical debate amongst philosophers and behaviorists over whether or not any of us is truly free when we choose any action. That is the age-old debate over ”free-will” vs. determinism. I am unqualified to dive too deeply into those waters, though I have taken a swim in them from time to time.
I’m writing to bring attention to the fact that when we act as if we are free to choose, there is something driving and impelling those choices. That something I will call ”preference”. There are two or more options available on the menu; and the one we choose is the one we prefer. How could it be otherwise?
I’m writing this now, at this moment, rather than doom-scrolling through Twitter, crawling back into a warm bed, going for a walk in thirty degree drizzle, reading news, turning on the television, etc. I’m writing because it is what I prefer to be doing with this slot of time, energy, and attention more than anything else I could be doing. You are doing the same thing.
It is important to note that preference does not equal desire. I have desires that I may actually prefer more than my current choice, but at the time of my choosing they were not on the available menu. I desire to be walking a secluded beach with my girlfriend in seventy degree weather with a light breeze in our hair, watching the sun come up over the ocean. But that is not on this morning’s menu. I’m sure you have desires like that.
Our choices are driven by our preferences. This phenomenon is a fact we experience over and over. This is what makes the concept of free will feel true. Seen in that light, no one can take away another’s free will, because there is no power that can be exerted to take away another’s preference as long as more than one choice is available. You may severely limit the menu of options available to an individual. You may wickedly create for them a reality that is a constant choice between the lesser of two evils. But you cannot take away their ability to choose what they prefer from the remaining options.
This realization has helped me interpret both my own choices and behaviors as well as those of others. Watch what someone does or refuses to do. Listen to what they say or refuse to say. You are seeing the external manifestations of their internal preferences, moment by moment, event by event, day by day.
I am overweight because on the whole, I prefer it to the effort and attentiveness that is necessary to lose the extra pounds. I work for my self as a commissioned salesman, with all of its accompanying risks, because I prefer it to a rigid schedule and losing autonomy in my workday.
The example of overweight-ness is illustrative of the fact that preferential choices happen in the moment. They are myopic. They are not contemplative of the long game, unless…unless you put that contemplation on the menu. Because to be sure, I prefer health to obesity, in general. I prefer activity to lethargy, in general. I prefer self-control to sloth or gluttony, in principle.
A key then to making better choices, is to pick those which will be a balance of preferred outcomes both in the present and into the future.
