Progress

…in the utter absence of the virtues we cannot speak straightforwardly of a self whose interest lies in their possession.

- Talbot Brewer

The main benefit of establishing a firmly independent identity is that one outside that identity cannot call you to virtue.  This inability to call to virtue is, I believe, the very nature of an utterly independent identity.  “I am who I am, period.  No one else can understand who I am.  And insofar as making judgments about my virtues requires understanding me, no one can judge me.”

We have both consciously and unconsciously led ourselves to the establishment of independent identity, in terms of individuals and groups.  Thus, the chorus of drooling mouths and blank stares crying in (ironic?) unison: “Don’t judge me.”

For groups it is more difficult.  A rather rigid list of attributes is necessary, from which those within the group should not stray.  These lists of attributes must necessarily be exclusive.  Therefore, those who are not part of the group must not (be allowed to) have these particular attributes.

As with the cacophony of “don’t judge,” there is a (sometimes subtle) malice within the drive to independent identity.  Virtue is in the richest sense the call to be the best that one can be given one’s unique abilities, interests, and so forth.  And therefore, insofar as virtue and identity are wrapped up, one’s virtue must conform to the essential attributes of the group’s identity.  In a group with a strict independent identity, the individual begins to disappear in direct proportion to her/his identification with the group.

With even more obvious malice, a rigid independent identity is created and maintained most easily through the presence of enemies – a group that is “not us” and with whom compromise is essentially a betrayal of one’s group.  And, again, insofar as identity and virtue are related, it is not simply a betrayal, but is a sign of vice (viciousness), an immorality.  And, as Nietzsche wrote in 1886, “in the presence of morality, as in the face of any authority, one is not allowed to think, far less to express an opinion: here one has to – obey!”

Our culture is saturated in attempts to establish strict independent identity.  If we were to interpret our culture charitably, then this has arisen as a misunderstanding of what it means for people and groups to be unique, reacting against a past morality that was unwilling to recognize unique virtue.  A less charitable interpretation would be that among individuals it is a desire for viciousness, and that among groups it is an attempt by a few to enslave the many and so acquire more power for themselves.  I  think it began largely as a misunderstanding and has grown more and more into an attempt to control, nourished by that rich mindlessness that abounds in our society.

And so we are here: one cannot call another individual or group to virtue.  The virtues of the individual or group are thus defined by that person or group.  The result?  In a diabolical twisting of actual virtue ethics, because whatever desire I have is a drive toward my virtue, the frustration of my desires by another person is immoral and therefore should be considered unjust.  Put simply, we’re a nation of 2-year olds.

But I really shouldn’t judge.

A Bone for Bigots

The highest values devalue themselves.  The aim is lacking; “why?” finds no answer.

- Nietzsche

There are apparently two sides to the gay marriage issue: the enlightened and loving crowd vs. the hate-filled bigoted homophobes.  My love of the underdog has inspired me to throw a bone to the bigots (they are like dogs, after all) and see if they might have at least some argument to support their view – an argument that doesn’t draw directly from any (ignorant, narrow-minded, unscientific, hateful!!!) religion.

Is being able to marry a right?  Let us say that marriage was no longer overseen by the government.  Would our rights have been abridged?  I could still carry on a long term, faithful relationship with an individual.  Nothing would change, except the governmental title for what I am doing.  My actions will not be made illegal nor will they be hindered in any way.  So, have I lost a right?  Or am I being constrained in some manner that violates the “equal protection” clause of the 14th amendment?  It seems strange to make that claim.  Nevertheless, this right is understood in terms of a more basic “fairness”: Two people of the opposite sex can marry, so two people of the same sex should be able to as well.

(“Fairness” should be much more notorious of a word than it is.  Nevertheless, this is at least arguably a good use of the term.)

When speaking of marriage, I will use “right,” in scare quotes.  (It takes little awareness to realize that commandeering loaded terms like “right” is simply an attempt to wield a big stick with which to beat down one’s opponents.  Thus, the scare quotes are important for me not to feel soiled by the use of the word…)

Everyone has an equal “right” to marry someone of the opposite sex.  That is, all people, whether heterosexual or homosexual, have that same “right.”  So, the question is not whether everyone has an equal “right” to marriage.  It is a question of whether everyone has an equal “right” to marry whomever they wish – with the obvious provision that the other person be an adult that consents to the marriage.

Let us say that we declare as a “right” the freedom to carry on a long term, sexual relationship with whichever consenting adult is interested and that the state must recognize this relationship as marriage.  Obviously, this opens the door to incest.  It is unclear why a relationship of incest between consenting adults should be outlawed if this is the nature of the “right” to marry.

It is reasonable that incest would be illegal while homosexual marriage is legal if marriage is not considered a “right.”  But, it seems that if we use the language of rights, and reduce it to the idea of “fairness” – heterosexuals can marry those they desire to marry (provided the other is a consenting adult), so it is only fair that all people should be able to marry whomever they desire – we have no recourse for keeping incest illegal.

In fact, I’d say that polygamy and polyandry should, if such language is used, be made legal as well.  Why should we limit marriage to two consenting adults?  Is that not as arbitrary a rule as limiting it to two adults of the opposite sex?  Why, if two consenting adults can marry whomever they desire, can’t three consenting adults marry?  That is to say, if the “right” to marry is grounded in one’s desire to have a particular title attached to one’s relationship, then why would the desires of, say, a man and three women to have that title attached to their relationship not be a “right” as well?

This may have served as a reductio ad absurdum or as a call to greater equality.  I believe it is the first.  We realize that there is something to marriage that cannot simply be based on the desire of consenting adults.  But we have no real understanding of what that is.  So, we simply make claims based on our comfort level.

But is our comfort level a good measure of what should and shouldn’t be?  Is our discomfort simply a holdover from a time before rational egalitarianism took over?  Or could it be that we need to regain some sense of what precisely marriage is supposed to be so that we can understand why we have this discomfort?

In our hurry to multiply rights, it seems a bit of circumspection would be helpful.  At the very least, we should be willing to admit that not everything that we want, even when the term “fair” can be applied to it, is a matter of “rights.”  Rather, much is a matter of simply wants.

Guilt, Integrity, and Forgiveness

Guilt, Nietzsche says, is self-cruelty.  No matter if we agree with his idea that guilt is the will to power exerted upon oneself, if we are honest we realize that self-loathing is more pleasant than the alternative.  The alternative is integrity, in the sense of being whole or unified.

Guilt is essentially the dividing up of oneself so that one part stands over the other condemning it.  The present me, or better me, stands over the past me, or worse me, condemning it for what it did.  Guilt thus divides one into two, and the culpability is placed upon the part that is not presently in control of the will.

This division is classic in philosophy and religion – the rational part of a good person rules over the desires or emotions, and the latter will eventually be eradicated.  Nietzsche didn’t appreciate this dividing up of the individual, and so claimed that integrity was achieved through breaking out of those constraints that encouraged you to enact cruelty on oneself and using your power elsewhere.

But there is the possibility of forgiveness.  Forgiveness offered takes away one’s right to guilt.  For guilt divides a person, placing guilt in one part.  But forgiveness is not for a “bad part” – how could one forgive something that is inherently evil?  Forgiveness is for a person that must be a mix – one who has both good and bad, who has chosen to do evil and yet desires not to.  If I am forgiven and I hold onto guilt, then I have not accepted forgiveness and I am guilty without a right to being guilty.

Accepting true forgiveness is difficult and rare.  And real forgiveness is rarely offered.  It is more often manipulation, as Nietzsche makes sure to point out.  Which explains why we are so quick to maintain guilt over accepting forgiveness.  We don’t mind being manipulated when we are divided.  I stand with the manipulative one over the other part of myself and treat it cruelly.  But if I accept forgiveness and find it to be a form of manipulation, a kind of quid pro quo, then I have in integrity become subservient.  I am now a slave, something I cannot countenance.  Better the guilt.

Real forgiveness is rare.  Real acceptance of guilt is rarer still.  It is no wonder that Nietzsche believed them to simply be attempts to treat others and oneself cruelly.

Complaining, Injustice, and the Individual

The presence of a complaint does not always mean that an injustice has occurred.  This is obvious enough.  Nevertheless, we are inclined, trained even, to believe that our complaints arise from injustice.

To confuse our complaints with injustice is handy, insofar as the presence of injustice places upon the world a duty to make right whatever I am complaining about.  But such tremendous power of declaring that the world has a duty comes with an ironic reduction of the one making the complaint.

Insofar as an injustice has occurred, there has been a transgression of something that is universal to all people.  When I complain, attributing my frustration to an injustice, I immediately blur my individuality and claim that anyone in my situation would be upset.  If I interpret every frustration I have as an injustice, then there is no point at which the world clashes with my individuality.  Put another way, insofar as all my frustrations are due to injustice, my individuality has been domesticated enough to some group or universal humanity that I am skirting the edge of not being a person at all.  An automaton, perhaps, or a cog in the wheel.  But not a free individual.

Perhaps this is too hasty.  It may be possible that an individual can be so constituted that s/he is freely in utter compliance with the whole of humanity, or at least some group to which s/he belongs.  I don’t think it is, though.  One may willingly be kind and submissive enough, but if there are not at least moments of frustration or anger that are not due to injustices, then individuality is being crushed below some universality.

Thus, the irony: In achieving the power of declaring duties for the world, one must lose one’s individuality.  Very Kantian, I’d say.

What does it mean, though, to be frustrated or complain without feeling that there is a sense of injustice?  It is simply to be frustrated without the demand that things must change.  It is a strange sensation, to be sure.  One gets a sense of detachment from the way the world is working, a kind of free-floating feeling.  Things move a certain way, I hate it, but I do not demand that it be otherwise.  In short, I cannot accept the movement of the world, nor can the movement of the world be bent to my wishes.  We stand apart for a moment.

This is, I think, the very feeling of being a free individual.

There are many of course who claim to be standing apart from the world, or are acting in their individuality, but most of these ring hollow.  The reason is simple: they complain or enact their “individuality” in a manner that has the smell of a claim of injustice.  The world owes them something – the world has a duty to them.  And in their assertion of such power over the world, they reduce their individuality to some universal.  The individual with the out-of-the-ordinary tastes is not frustrated because s/he cannot pursue those tastes without scorn.  No.  “My rights are being trampled when society frowns on me.”  And though this is often true, the attempt to make all complaints find their source in injustice removes any individuality.

I am not saying that if we want there to be individuals, we must deny that there is any such thing as justice.  It is not for me to demand that someone else be an individual, let alone all people – as if I can give to the world a duty for all to be individuals.  That would be truly ironic.  It is for the individual to decide: Will I claim that my every frustration is an injustice?  Or will I admit that I am a person, free and irreducible to a cog?

Definitions for the Politically Illiterate

• Hate = lack of acceptance of a way of life, excluding of course those ways of life that I also find unacceptable (e.g. being a conscientious Catholic)
• _____phobia = a mental disorder disqualifying you for meaningful dialogue, the prime symptom of which is disagreement with my view.
• True = that which is the case, but whose is-the-case-ness is made more the case if I really think it is, and so sometimes requires the addition of modifiers (e.g. “so true”)
• Fair = whatever modification of the economic or social situation that makes people do as I want them to do

Waiting for Godot Ex Machina

Newt Gingrich has a way with words.  His recent comment about child labor laws and having poor kids working as janitors is no exception.

I’m not interested in arguing the (de)merits of his view, at least not directly.  You can figure that out for yourself.  Read what you’d expect from an attack here, and check out a retort here.

What I want to say is something more along the lines of what Sowell has argued, and explains the disconnect between the previous two linked articles.    Nietzsche, despite the ease with which people attack him, has something important to teach us, something that Sowell is trying to say here.  It’s a simple and really complex lesson: Reality does not care about your ideals.

Sowell says something like this, though reversed and personalized: Idealists do not care about reality.  He focuses on liberal idealists.  Perhaps conservative idealists can be included.  Newt Gingrich, at least with regard to his above comment, cannot.

The second article (pro-Newt’s comment) basically voices my opinion on the issue.  The first article voices silly claims, such as “It’s tough to do your homework when you’re working as a janitor, Mr. ex-Speaker.”  The willful misunderstanding of Gingrich’s comments is obvious here and throughout the article.  So much the worse for those that depend on a media that is meant to inform, rather than deform, the voting public.  But it’s an editorial, so give ‘em a break.

Gingrich, though he didn’t clearly voice it in the excerpts quoted in these articles, is pointing to something fundamental about human beings.  A bit of reality that does not fit well with our ideals: Work teaches people valuable attitudes for success.  And, on the other hand, poverty does not just reduce one’s initial financial capital for success – poverty fights against the attitude that is important for success.  Poverty itself can do this, but our contemporary U.S. version of poverty is particularly bad in this way.

What is this attitude that is important for success?  It’s simple – it is the attitude that “I am worth something, can accomplish stuff by my own power, and people will appreciate my work.”  Appreciating one’s work is primarily shown through payment.  But this must all come without the individual feeling as if the other must pay – either because some government forces them to, or even that they owe it to the individual because of some past or even present wrongs.  Once these issues of moral or legal requirements become the primary reason for payment in the mind of the one getting paid, the feeling of accomplishment will begin to fail.

I am not speaking terribly idealistically here.  This is just a part of capitalism.  We’re not really familiar with capitalism anymore, despite its status as our ubiquitous scapegoat.  In any case, I am not saying here that we should get rid of laws about proper payment, etc.  What I am saying is that the individual working must feel that s/he deserves by virtue of his/her work to be paid.  Not because of some moralistic claims about equality for the disadvantaged and so forth.

The problem with poverty in the U.S. is that it is made up primarily of people receiving assistance without “deserving” it.  I know, that sounds like Newt.  You may respond, “Everyone deserves a place to live and food to eat.”  The problem is that you are talking about an ideal, not reality.  And people may affirm what you say, but I’m pretty sure there is a significant difference between an idealist who claims to deserve the charity he receives, and the person who feels she deserves the payment for the work she did.  Try to disagree with me.  There is something forced, artificial about the first person (like Christian music).  Something meaningful about the latter.

“But what about the rich kids?  Shouldn’t they work as janitors, too?”  Here’s where reality shows its nasty amoral underbelly: Rich kids generally don’t need this lesson.  Perhaps it is because they have such a large financial cushion and the connections that come with riches.  Perhaps it is because many rich kids are forced to work hard in school.  Perhaps it is because they live surrounded by success, and have that peer-pressure pushing them toward success.  I have a student who attended one of the top private high schools in the U.S.  It has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation as well.  Yeah, there’s pressure there to succeed.

“So, what you’re saying is that kids in poverty are worse than rich kids?!”  Not at all.  But they are better situated to succeed.  Note the second extended quotation in the pro-Newt article.  A 35-year old man named “C” has never held a job, and has no male associates who have now or who have ever had jobs.  He knows a few women who do.  That arises from a culture of poverty.  Or, if we think Maher-like, from rich people trying to keep poor people poor.  Every ideal needs a devil.

The liberal response is generally something like this: “Poverty ruins people.  We need to send money to their schools, increase their chances of getting jobs through legal action, etc.”  Gingrich’s response is something like this: “Those schools are failing.  The best thing for these kids is to learn the basic attitudes necessary for successful work.”

The idealist within us cries out that this Newt is either stupid or evil.  And it surely offers us easier listening when one speaks to our inner idealists.  The problem is that we don’t live in an idealistic experience machine.  Reality settles back in.  We know that it is not simply lack of money that is the problem – we know this just from attending to our own experiences.  A barrage of people preaching that the world is unfair to you, that people are unfair to you, that if only those nasty rich people would stop being so blasted greedy and give you more money – is there anything more paralyzing to the will to succeed than this?  How can one who lives in the midst of such claims ever feel like s/he has earned – not through the enforcement of artificial moralisms, but through the creation of something valuable – what s/he has been paid?  And without that sense of the worth of one’s actions, how can anyone break out of the cycle of poverty?  In fact, isn’t it the attitude of being a victim that is poverty’s true power?

That is reality.  Getting degrees does not make one’s idealistic moralisms have any more power over the world.  “That’s not fair” does nothing.  Unless you believe in a deus ex machina.  Liberals often seem to confuse this reality-bending power with money, or perhaps more education (specifically education about how unfair the world is).  But I’d suggest that, from time to time, we set our feet on the ground and try to offer the tools necessary so that the individual in poverty can gain that feeling of worthiness.  (And, for the love of God, your self-esteem additives to education will not work…do you really think people are that stupid?!)  And then let that sense of worthiness trickle about among those in poverty.  Maybe we’ll see a revival of that almost legendary overcoming spirit that we’ve heard about those in the U.S. from generations past.

And, queue generic liberal response: “Um, haven’t you heard that everyone was racist and sexist back then?  We definitely don’t want to be like them!  Clearly, you don’t know history!  Or perhaps you want to re-institute slavery?!  Oh, and given that today is Thanksgiving, i.e., get that genocide a’rolling day, they killed Native Americans, too!”  Hard to argue with that.

The Rational Good, Victimization, and Wealth Creation: Thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street Movement

I believe that there is a complex relation in the way that we use technology, the way we see ourselves in relation to the world, and the general complaint that we have about the present economy.  In brief: Our attraction to rational structures, the pleasantness of technology, and our call for government to intervene are all related, and perhaps constitute a descending spiral.  Let me see if I can make my case.

A View of Economics

The complaints both among the Occupy Wall St. (OWS) and the Tea Party (TP) crowds have some significant overlap.  And in fact there are many that share these ideas.  Each group has been or soon will be largely commandeered by one of the two parties and used as a means of beating up the other one.  But even though the TP leans conservative and OWS leans liberal, many of their complaints are similar.  Their solutions may be different.  I want to make a couple simple (simplistic?) economic distinctions and then note some wider cultural issues that may be feeding a particular point of view in the debate.

There are at least two forms of wealth creation, though the second may not technically be wealth creation.  The first is what I’ll call broad wealth creation (BWC).  BWC is the production of goods and services that have the following properties: 1) They increase the value of one’s time and 2) they are such that they can be widely distributed without conflict.  Let me explain these briefly.

(1) simply means that one increases productivity without increasing the time spent.  For example, you are roofing a house.  You are being paid 500 dollars for labor.  If you use a hammer, it will take you 15 hours.  If you use a nail gun, it will take you 12 hours.  The use of the nail gun gave you a per hour wage increase of $8.00.  It is clear that in just 2 or 3 days of work, the nail gun will have paid itself off and will of course continue to work after those 2 or 3 days.  Thus, the nail gun is a product that increases the value of your time.

And, in turn, it can bring the cost of roofing down, lowering the cost of repairing a house and also lowering the cost of homeownership, as well as for all shingled buildings like apartments and so forth.  Thus, it can have the effect of reducing the cost of all housing, thus making so that we need not spend so much of our work on housing.

This brings us to (2), which stipulates that BWC cannot be the production of a good or service that results in conflict.  What I mean by this is not that the product/service causes competition to increase.  A roofing company that buys nail guns can reduce their prices slightly versus a company that just uses hammers.  Thus, the invention of the nail gun could be considered something that “increased” competition.  But all that is required is that the other company purchase nail guns, and all is made equal again.

But consider the nail gun versus a clever accountant.  A clever accountant may be able to discover ways to avoid paying certain taxes and fees that most businesses must pay.  Though perhaps not immediately obvious, such clever tricks create a kind of conflict.  Insofar as one company avoids taxes and fees, a larger portion of the burden is placed on other companies.  And insofar as the other companies also use clever accountants, the government must double-down on enforcement, seek to stop up loopholes, or simply raise the fees or taxes.  This shifting of burden or forcing of the hand of government is what I mean by causing conflict.

You see, in turn, that there is really no broad benefit to society if (2) fails to be the case.  Whereas the simple creation of a nail gun has the possibility of increasing pay and reducing costs for most people in a society, a clever accountant benefits only a small group, and in such a way that may increase costs on the rest of society.

This conflict-causing kind of “wealth creation,” I will call narrow wealth creation (NWC), because it “creates” wealth for only a limited group.  It still contains property (1), in that it increases the value of the time of those in that limited group, but it transgresses (2) in that it is not capable of increasing the wealth of society as a whole.  The result is that NWC is actually just wealth redistribution, not really wealth creation at all.

It is in the interest of the whole that NWC be kept to a minimum, while BWC be encouraged as much as possible.  Why would any group consider NWC rather than BWC?  Both can make a company wealthy, while the former is only good for the company.  And of course, the wealthier a society is, the wealthier the company/individual doing wealth creation can be.

NWC comes from a simple cost-benefit analysis.  Let us say that a company makes $10,000,000/year profit.  Taxes and compliance with regulations costs the company 30% of these profits.  That is $3,000,000.  Let’s say that they can expand and rework their factory in order to increase the value of their product.  This will cost $5,000,000 over 5 years and will result in an estimated increased profit of $7,500,000 over 10 years.  That is, for 5 years they will be running at a loss or breaking even, but it will pay off in the long run.  (My guess is that almost all business expansions and improvements work like this.)

But let’s say they discover that spending $500,000 for a collection of clever accountants and lawyers and lobbyists, they can avoid paying $1,500,000 every year in taxes and regulation compliance.  These expenditures will delay the expansion and reworking of the factory for a number of years.

Which will the company decide?  Perhaps they should be compassionate and moral and decide to expand and rework the factory – giving people a better product and giving more people jobs.  But what is the profit difference?  In the first, they are risking a lot (what if the economy tanks?  What if new taxes and regulations pop up that make the company insolvent?), though doing something great.  And it promises to increase profits over 10 years by $2,500,000, and in the long run perhaps by a lot more.  In the latter case, they get some peace of mind, have little to no risk, and increase their profits by $1,000,000 per year, which is an increase of $10,000,000 over ten years.

All of these are made up numbers, but it shows how high taxes and expensive regulations encourage a push toward NWC.  To venture into BWC is always risky, and even more so when things are complex.  NWC takes away much of that risk.

A society that is dominated by NWC is one in which people become rich primarily by wealth redistribution.  When I see the complaints of the OWS folks, it seems that this assumption is lurking underneath – that the rich and powerful have become richer and more powerful by redistributing wealth from the poor and middle class to themselves.

What about the solution?  There are several options for solutions, but most of them have undesirable aspects.  Get rid of or severely roll back government regulation?  Yes, most people would argue that there are regulations that are ridiculous, but that is a long and difficult discussion.

What about taking the more OWS approach?  Which is something like: Limit the ability of companies to buy politicians.  We all would agree on this, I think.  How do we do this?  It would seem we would need some more regulation and some focused policing.  But I’m not sure how well this would work.  If the benefits of playing the system, and the costs of not playing the system, are large enough, then the rich and powerful will find a way.  And, besides, there is always the option to move the company elsewhere.

A View of Our Culture

Why the general unwillingness to roll back government regulations?  The government is capable of doing things that we are not.  Direct and maintain an army, create infrastructure that crosses different domains within the society, and so forth.  Further, the government can look out for broad interests that many of us as individuals or groups may ignore.  Say: the environment, equality, and so forth.

Further, most of us lack the willingness to think through the issues related to regulation.  This lack of awareness is a favorite insult of conservatives about OWS.  For many, it may be too many steps to move from NWC to that which encourages it.  We simply say “NWC is bad!” (whatever form it happens to be) and point at those who participate in it, without considering that which creates the cost/benefit equation that encourages companies to do NWC.

There is another aspect of society that is complex and, I think, plays into this discussion.  It involves the interplay between our attachment to technology and the “natural” virtue of the underdog.

We are addicted to technology.  From the video games to computers to smartphones, we are always connected.  And this connection offers us a “world” that is rational and controlled.  Of course, by “rational” I don’t mean that everyone acts rationally, but that one is the master of one’s domain.  Even the move to texting as opposed to talking on a phone is a shift toward control – if we are not talking live, then I need not respond, you can’t hear my voice and make judgments about it, and so forth.  All is controlled.

This kind of control is tricky.  Consider a role-playing game (my favorite kind).  My activities result in a rational and clear progression.  They are exciting, beautiful, and glorious.  But my interactions with, say, my friends can be boring, unpleasant, and inglorious.  Things don’t work the way I want them to, they are not interesting, and I am just another person full of faults and failures.

Whereas prior to all this “interconnectedness,” we were forced to function in relation to people and so learned to deal with these things.  (Perhaps manners were the previous generations’ form of control in interactions?  Has technology made manners unnecessary for us?)

When I get off my video game and go to work, I experience a sense of helplessness and mistreatment and lack of belonging.  This may be better or worse depending on how “introverted” one is.  But living a personal life of control, then entering the public realm causes a feeling of helplessness.

Enter the house of someone in poverty.  I can almost guarantee that the possessions of that person/family are primarily made up of entertainment products.  In entertainment, we relax and gain control.  In life, we are a mess.

Entertainment and interconnectedness relate to our failure to be informed, though information is easier and cheaper to access than ever in human history.  Further, if knowledge is power, more people have access to this “power” than ever before.  But we have acquired a general feeling of helplessness.

I think the ease of enforcing my own order through technology is part of this problem.  There are other things – the amount of information available can make us shut down, because we can’t get it all and don’t have a clear way to filter it.  (Consider where those filters might be grown, and you begin to see the danger of a “don’t judge” culture.  I’m not saying here that a “don’t judge” culture is all bad, but that there are dangers involved.)

In such a society, we follow the rules – we are fairly good people, we “follow our dreams” like we’re told, and we go to college.  We get out, and there are no jobs.  This is not fair.  It is “out of order.”  We feel helpless – partly rightly so, and partly because we’re too accustomed to an ordered world.  (Part of this may relate to how our childhood is purposely and inadvertently being further and further extended, and how adolescence is considered the goal of human life in our society.  But I’ll leave that alone here.)

With helplessness comes blame.  With too much entertainment comes limited critical thinking.  And, in fact, when we feel overwhelmed, we tend to shut down and become despondent and/or angry.

If I am right, the suggestion is that as we become more connected with technology, we will become less able to handle interactions with real life.

The Enlightenment Ain’t Done with Us Yet

There is one further factor that will bring things into place.  The Enlightenment several centuries ago raised human reason to ultimate authority.  And though there have been many struggles back and forth, we have not really lost our faith in reason.  The incarnation of our reason is most evident in technology.  Trash metanarratives, bring your linguistic and interpretive weapons, and cry out about power relations all you want – they will never stand against my smartphone (I don’t actually have one), Facebook, or a good video game/movie.

Of course, there is a disconnect here.  Those attacks on reason belong to real human interactions, and even those interactions that take place through technology.  But they do not belong to my ability to control and form my experience through technology.  Kant “proved” God through the need in our reason for a summum bonum which makes those that are good be rewarded for that good.  After all, to be good simply means to be worthy of happiness.  There must be a God who can make them happy, and so can order things in such a way as to lead to this summum bonum.

Perhaps we don’t need God.  What we needed were a few centuries of technological development.  Human reason has led us into a world in which we are made happy.  It is different from everyday life.  It is a new world of order, in which I can acquire happiness by my reason alone.

How difficult it is to come down from your “heaven” to everyday life, to find that even your “heaven” may be threatened by the misfortunes of everyday life.  Just as human reason has been made “flesh” and makes its dwelling among us, we find it crucified on the tree of everyday economics.  (Did I go too far there?)

And so we lose our faith in our own capabilities in everyday life but retain our faith that life should be rational.  After all, reason gave us our “heaven.”  The obvious conclusion: We need overseers who will make life rational.

The Point

Take a sense of helplessness, add to it an unwavering faith that the ordered and rational is the good (especially that which makes me happy – is there any other kind?), and you get a group of people who believe that the way to happiness is through a very powerful government of really intelligent, rational people who make all things rational and ordered.  All that is keeping the government from being structured this way is the interference of rich and powerful corporations.  We (meaning the 99%) all want a rational and fair government.  They (the 1%) have, on the other hand, a sense of power over society and so work to keep that at the expense of the 99%.  And that sense of order is accomplished primarily through NWC.

This perspective involves several fairly serious over-simplifications.  The first is the sense of our own helplessness.  This is an over-simplification in that it tries to reduce our situations to the fault of others.  Further, it suggests that simple greed is the source of corporations doing NWC instead of BWC.  Maher said in a discussion, partly joking perhaps, that the rich (and Republicans) don’t want the poor to become rich because, well, who would then do the work that the rich hire the poor to do?  That is, simple selfishness is the source.

But that seems ridiculous.  It is rather a mix of beliefs.  First, the primary concern of the company is to make a profit, not to carry out philanthropy.  Second, cost-benefit analysis in relation to taxes, regulation, the market, and so forth.  Sure, we might say that profit as a concern is the definition of greed.  That may be so, but the pursuit of profit is the source of BWC and jobs, just as much as it is a source of NWC.

Given that we can do the two options mentioned above – draw back government regulations or try to cut off business influence – we are left with two undesirable solutions.  The former can significantly reduce safety (the pursuit of safety is in almost all cases NWC), while the latter can significantly increase governmental NWC and may barely reduce business NWC.

There is one positive step that could be taken easily: making the tax code simple and difficult to modify.  Insofar as complexity invites playing the system, and the perpetual changing invites crony capitalism, one that is simple and difficult to modify would immediately cut off a lot of NWC.  Perhaps Herman Cain is the only one of the present candidates, the present POTUS included, that gets the importance of a simplification of the tax system.

Will it change?  Probably not.  The tax code is a source of much power and money.  A simple tax code would result in a loss of resources devoted to the NWC that is accomplished through accountants and lawyers.  In turn, it would significantly reduce the power of politicians to choose winners and losers, and thus significantly reduce the amount of campaign money and other benefits flowing from businesses to the politicians.

More needs to be changed than the tax code.  But this little change would likely be enormous for our society.  But it won’t change.  Those powers that seek to incorporate the complaints of OWS and the TP do not, I think, want it to change.  And, as the OWS gets taken over by the Democrat establishment and the Unions, it will cease to offer real solutions.  And as the TP gets taken over by the Republican establishment and the Neo-Cons, it too will offer nothing of substance.  Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, though perhaps not perfect, is thinking in the right direction.

The irony:  The cries of OWS are largely related to the sense of having money and property forcefully taken from them and redistributed to the rich.  The solution?  To increase government regulation over businesses, while reducing business influence on the government.  But increased regulation is likely to increase NWC, which is presently the primary complaint about businesses.  We may try to make laws and a police force to make sure this doesn’t happen, but this is another form of NWC.  After all, most of what government does costs a lot and creates no wealth,* even if it offers some benefits to us.  In turn, if we cannot work out the complex laws and intense oversight required to keep the rich and powerful businesses and their rich and clever lawyers and accountants to buy politicians, NWC will simply increase.  And as NWC increases, the amount of wealth in a society begins to grow stagnant.  And if an economy becomes stagnant, the rich can only become richer through redistribution of wealth.  That is, we are brought full circle.  When you are not making more pie, you can only get a bigger piece by taking from others.

But, again, whereas our parents worked hard their entire lives just to give us a chance at a better life, we are appalled by a thought like that.  We may work hard for a short time for a better life, but we have learned from technology that rational order will not demand such sacrifices from us.  So, make changes, and let them be immediate and “fair.”

* The government has the ability to create wealth through R&D funding, infrastructure production, and simply maintaining safety from criminals and external enemies.  All of these bring about a broad increase of value to us all.  But the government lacks efficiency (it doesn’t really have a bottom-line that keeps its feet to the fire), and a good portion of what the government does involves things that are benefits to only a small portion at the cost of everyone else.  Further, a lot of safety and other regulations, though offering benefits, simply consume wealth.  One example is car seat regulations, which would make the development of simple adjustable seat belts in cars (which could save all parents a decent amount of money) not worthy of development – because it would take time before people could use them, due to slow-to-change laws. And with the lobbying of those companies that make child car seats fighting, this might be long and expensive. That is, BWC would be more costly than NWC.

The Fall, the Meno, and a Tentative Definition of Philosophy

Have we done him any harm by making him perplexed and numb as the torpedo fish does?

- Socrates, the Meno (84b)

In the sobbing-for-joy-causing book Dialectic and Dialogue: Plato’s Practice of Philosophical Inquiry, Francisco Gonzalez argues for a fairly unorthodox interpretation of Plato.  In short, Plato is not a Platonist.  In fact, he has a perspective on philosophy that comes close to being the antithesis of Platonism.

I have experienced a few significant struggles in my own life that straddled the fence between existential and intellectual.  The first of these is concerning the nature of morality.  The second is philosophy in general.  I am going to try to explain my concerns, and tie them into both the Meno and the Fall, and then be so bold as to suggest a definition of philosophy in general.  As a caveat, let me just say that I’m wrong.  That way you can’t argue with me.

Morality is funny.  If you are a theist, then you have to deal with the so-called “Euthyphro dilemma,” among other issues.  If you are an atheist (or agnostic), then you have to try to explain how there could be an “ought” at all.  I am firmly in the first camp.  But Euthyphro’s problem isn’t really the most troubling – we can get around that with a little wiggling.

The “ought” as a command from “outside” is tricky, and this problem is old as well and echoes some points of the Euthyphro dilemma.  What is the motivation for obeying it?  What makes it an “ought” at all?  Is it fear of punishment, hope for reward?  If so, then it seems the “ought” is just another form of power relations.  Positing God does not solve the problem – as if giving someone a bigger gun makes the “ought” somehow intrinsically good.

These, again, are problems that can be wiggled around.  But a more interesting, and meaningful, view of the “ought” may be found in the Hebrew Bible’s (Old Testament’s) presentation of the first sin.  In Genesis 2, God gives a command that sounds like the description of an “ought” with either a punishment or a more “natural” danger attached: Do not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or you will surely die.  Either God would kill them, or they would die by virtue of having ingested the fruit.

The temptation to the first sin is fascinating, and is mostly ignored by those who read Genesis.  The promise of the tree is the acquisition of the knowledge so that humans will be “like God, knowing good and evil.”  Thus, the various cults that arose, seeing Eve as the one who brings wisdom to humanity.  Perhaps, Eve, not Thales, is the founder of philosophy?

The rest is history.  They eat, (more?) suffering and death enter the world, and not even science has yet to release us from our tendency toward death.

What went wrong in acquiring knowledge of good and evil, or ethical knowledge?  I have a suggestion that is meant to perhaps piggy-back off of Bonhoeffer’s excessive genius.

The first seems obvious.  Before the Fall, one knew good simply by virtue of knowing God.  Now, this “knowing God” does not mean “having a list of true propositions about God” – though perhaps having some true propositions is surely a result of such knowledge.  Rather, it is knowledge as acquaintance.  Just like, if you read a biography on Lincoln, you would know Lincoln in terms of propositions.  But it takes personal acquaintance to really know Lincoln (though we might perhaps leave room for an acquaintance through propositions + imagination, but that opens up a larger discussion).

Many have described the Fall as the acquiring of knowledge of good and evil in the sense of acquaintance.   That is, prior to the Fall, humans knew good and evil propositionally, but are now acquainted with the distinction.  I’d like to argue that this is essentially the opposite of the truth.  Rather, prior to the Fall, humans were acquainted with God/the good.  The Fall was a desire to acquire propositions, because these seemed to make one like God/the good (containing the good in one’s mind, you might say), with the ability to act on one’s own knowledge.  The result?  Broken relationships and pain.

Skip forward some unclear number of years to Plato.  In the Meno, we find Socrates talking to Meno about virtue and teaching/learning.  In the most famous part of the Meno, Socrates takes a mathematically-ignorant slave and shows that this slave actually knows geometry due to a kind of recollection.  That is, Socrates guides, but never gives an answer to, the slave so that he might discover the length of the side of a square that has twice the area of a 2X2 square.  Gonzalez (mentioned above) sees in this entire dialogue a collection of antics by Socrates that suggest that conclusion thought to be shown by Socrates by most contemporary scholars is incorrect.  The issue is explained simply.

The characters: Meno was a sophist who expounded all the time about virtue.  But he wasn’t virtuous.  Socrates could not give a definition of virtue, and yet was virtuous.  The issue: virtue.  Already, the issue, if you can get past the classic understanding of the dialogues, is clear: knowledge of good and evil seems opposed to actually being good (though “virtue” in Greek is slightly broader than our normal understanding of ethics, but still includes ethics).

At one point, Meno throws a silly question at Socrates: If we know something, then why do we need to look for it, and if we don’t know something, then how do we know if we’ve found it?  Socrates retorts not through an argument, but by a showing.  And we’re brought to the slave.

Socrates’ goal is to show that the slave is actually recollecting geometrical truths.  He leads the slave to realize that in order to make a square with twice the area of a 2X2 square, the side of the new square must be the length of the diagonal inside the 2X2 square.  Thus, most scholars have said, Socrates led the slave to realize that he knew the answer.

But there’s a fairly important point they are missing here.  What is the length of that diagonal?  It is the square root of 8.  The square root of 8 is an irrational (alogos) number, meaning that it has a decimal that goes on forever without repeating (i.e. cannot be represented as a fraction).  Does Meno’s slave know the length of a side of a square that has twice the area of a 2X2 square?  Yes and no.  He does not, indeed cannot, know the length (unless, I suppose, he represented it as a square root – but he does not do this shortcut either).  But the slave has become acquainted with what cannot be known.

Of course, this was used to show how virtue can be known.  We recognize virtue because we are acquainted with it.

Though I am no expert in epistemology (the study of what knowledge is, and how we can know), let me gather what I’ve seen from the unending failure that is epistemology.  Gettier made a mess of things with his examples of justified true beliefs that yet appeared not to be knowledge.  His general problem has yet to be solved.

Let me give perhaps the most famous example used today: fake barns.  You are travelling through the country side of, say, Iowa.  You happen to be in an area where the chamber of commerce decided there should be barns, even though there aren’t many, in order to increase profits from tourism.  So, they raise a bunch of barn façades.  As you’re driving through, you think you’re seeing barns, but you’re actually driving by hundreds of barn façades.  At one point, though, you look at an actual barn (indistinguishable by you from the façades), and by luck you think at that moment: “I know that that is a barn.”  You are right.  You are justified in what you believe.  But, we argue, you don’t have knowledge.

Now how in the world can we know that we don’t have knowledge in this case?  It does not arise out of the definition of knowledge – that’s what we’re trying to establish.  It can only be from a kind of acquaintance with knowing that may never be describable in propositions.

And maybe this is what philosophy is.  It is literally the “love of wisdom,” and might wisdom be the realization not of truth in proposition, but the living-in-acquaintance with the truth?  Plato’s dialogues most often show Socrates asking a question like “What is virtue?” or some other “What is x?” question.  The answers are always unsatisfactory.  But in those dialogues we often see the answer in Socrates’ method of asking questions.  Note that the propositions always fail – to trust in the propositions is to fail to achieve wisdom.  It is in Socrates’ questioning that we are shown wisdom.

In turn, we see in Genesis 2-3 both an acquaintance with God/the good, and an attempt to grasp a knowledge of the good (and God?).  The former is not enough for someone to break away and live by one’s collection of knowledge.  After all, you can’t cease to be acquainted with someone/thing and still be acquainted with Him/it.  But propositional knowledge is portable.  One need not be acquainted with God or the good in order to have propositional knowledge about Him/it.  One with propositional knowledge of good and evil (note that previously, it would have been knowledge-as-acquaintance only with the good; now there is distinction, definition) doesn’t need God anymore.  Relationship is broken under the good-become-law.

This is not, of course, to disparage the working out of definitions and the analysis involved in criticisms and so forth.  What it does suggest is that wisdom is never to be found through faith in the possibility of propositions, but only in the realization that propositions can only offer approximations regarding the important questions.  Wisdom is found in the use of critical thought to help us realize that the good (and all such “universals”) is something with which we may be acquainted, not something to be trapped in propositions.  Philosophy is the love of this wisdom.  Maybe, but probably not.

Politeness and the Morality of Necessity

Whenever issues about personal morality come up, people often retreat to something that sounds much like relativism: What’s right for you may not be right for me, and that’s alright.  The classic response: Would you say that this also applies to Hitler?

David Brooks noted this confused morality in a New York Times article.

I’m not sure that what is underlying this is relativism.  Not because people end up being wildly inconsistent (these apparent relativists are prone to apoplexy regarding such issues like, say, the war in Iraq, as well as a host of other issues), but because there seems to be a better explanation – one that explains both the relativistic language as well as the rather non-relativistic righteous indignation.

There are three players that are included together here: polite language, pride, and broken/stunted relationships.  I’m going to try to tie these together, and show how these give rise to this relativistic-sounding morality.

Polite language is a funny tool.  It is useful when entering a relationship, when interacting even with a close friend in particular kinds of situations (say, public affairs), and when a relationship has become stunted/broken but you seek to maintain the image of friendship.

In each of these situations, a common aspect runs through that I believe is a central aspect of polite language: the appeal to necessity.  For example, consider the classic example: A guy whom the girl does not like asks her out on a date.  Instead of speaking honestly by saying, “I don’t like you and so don’t want to go out on a date with you,” she responds politely, saying, “I’m washing my hair that night.”  In short, she avoids directly exposing her desire and will by announcing a schedule conflict, which serves as a kind of necessary activity that she can or should not skip.

The same kind of necessity is used when avoiding the suggestion that you may be accusing your interlocutor of some kind of un-amiable will.  For example, when an acquaintance apologizes for not showing up to some event, you respond, “Oh, don’t worry about it.  I know what it’s like to be so busy.”  In announcing that you see the other’s actions as necessary, you avoid the unpleasantness of an exposed will.

This dissembling aspect of polite language is useful, and I believe even good to an extent, when beginning relationships.  After all, when you don’t know someone, you should hesitate to make claims about his/her will.  Accordingly, there is (as much as I hate to admit it!) a right application of the phrase: “If you don’t know me, then you shouldn’t judge me.”   Of course, I don’t know Pol Pot….

When a relationship is stunted/broken and we want to maintain the semblance of friendship, politeness is a useful farce.  In this case, it is used to avoid bringing up what we probably know, but would reveal the unpleasant aspects of the wills in the relationship.

At the heart of this is a kind of pride.  Honesty has a habit of messing up that image we have constructed around ourselves.  For people to see my will would ruin that polished veneer I’ve created around myself (LOL).  For me to see their wills would make what they think of me obvious – this, too, would crack the smooth surface of illusion that allows me to keep the world in a controllable form.

It is hard to explain this clearly, but the effect is well-known enough from comedies.  Say there are two friends, Susan and Cindy.  They think they’re decent friends, until one day Susan walks in on Cindy saying really nasty things about her.  They notice each other, and chaos ensues, even if they try to cover it up by trying to recover politeness with such exclamations as “That’s not what I meant” and other foolishness.  The politely ordered world of both has collapsed under the weight of honesty. (Copyright Iris Murdoch)

So, our pride leads us to want things under a certain kind of control, in which we know our place and power and can exert influence accordingly.  Politeness helps us toward that end.  (Perhaps it is now obvious why I would equate politeness and politics…)  Finding our place in an ordered world…is it any surprise that our morality would begin to reflect the essential characteristics of polite language?

Perhaps you might respond that this contemporary semi-relativism does not offer us an ordered world, but one of disorder.  But I don’t think that this is a pure relativism.  Relativism, as in almost any form of morality (that the average person can understand), involves the will of the person.  Most morality may include some discussion of necessity in explaining certain evils, but the will is ever-present.  I believe the contemporary morality that has become increasingly popular is a “morality of necessity.”  The reason that there is an apparent inconsistency is fairly straightforward: Communicating morality requires the magnification of the will at the expense of necessity.  And so this “morality of necessity” (“MoN” from now on) runs into inconsistencies when speaking about morality because the language does not lend itself well to such claims.  Relativistic language comes close, but is not quite sufficient.

One further thing must be noted before we make the connection between polite speech and the MoN.  It is clear enough why we would use the language of necessity with acquaintances, like a lawyer defending a client.  It is not yet clear why we would try to use this language universally, and so form it into an actual morality (even relativistic morality is a universal principle).  In short, this is the addition of the moral principle: “We ought to love everyone.”  Of course, this principle first needs to be torn from its home, beaten to a pulp, thrown into heavy traffic, used as a collector of human waste, and only then offered as an example of the beautiful.  So to speak.

Why must this principle be abused so as not to be really recognizable?  We’ll get there, by seeing first that this principle, in its mutated form, has already been presented.  Pride seeks an ordered world.  And insofar as the world an individual lives in today is much more global than, say, a century ago, the desire to get the whole ordered has become more widespread.  Honesty brings disorder to the carefully controlled polite/political world.  And so we desire a polite relationship with the world, to keep things under control.  And therefore we create a universal morality: everyone should just get along (politely).

At the center of this is the polite characteristic of necessity.  In order to get along in our stunted and mutated version of “loving everyone,” we need to insist that everyone is governed by necessity.  So, even our enemies are excused of their actions because of how they have been mistreated.

Of course, this requires that someone be blamed.  Perhaps not everyone can be governed by necessity.  Perhaps we need to be impolite to/about someone.  I’ve talked about this in the Dehumanizing Rationality series, specifically the Saints and Devils and How Hate Makes You a Saint entries.  I won’t repeat the full range of those arguments here, though I will hit on a couple points below.

And so our MoN looks something like this: People (that we want to get along with) are forced by things external or prior to their wills to act the ways that they do (genetics, poverty, bad family, culture, mistreatment from an imperialistic nation, etc.).  Therefore, we are all innocent.  We may do bad activities, but our wills remain untarnished because we were forced to do those actions.

The imputation of innocence upon all is announced by the language of relativism.  “To each his/her own.”  That is, one cannot choose to act differently, but one’s desires drag each different ways.  And no matter what one does, one is exonerated of guilt.  To accuse is to assume an evil will in another person, after all, and no one who “loves” (read: is polite to) everyone would accuse anyone of an evil will.  The declaration of (almost) universal innocence-by-necessity, in the language of morality, manifests as relativism.

But then people drop the relativism when dealing with Hitler.  Some though may try to maintain their “relativism” in the midst of such questioning.  They try to remain true to the logic of their language and/or Hitler is now far enough in the past to exonerate.  (Mention a more contemporary villain, say, George W. Bush, and clarity in moral judgment will immediately appear for most.)  When it comes down to it, one may be able to admit universal innocence by simple reference to physical necessity.  But we want to avoid that.  After all, we want our “love” of everyone to be from our wills.  So, we can’t have absolute necessity.  We just want necessity with regard to evil actions.  And, because we can’t have necessity with regard to all evil actions in everyone without requiring absolute necessity, we must have necessity with regard to evil actions for most, not everyone.  We must have our “devils” to justify the actions of us polite cherubs.

So, we have in the MoN a grounding in polite language, used as a tool of our pride to keep the world ordered as we desire.  Who knew that “loving” everyone could be so selfish?

In this “love,” we maintain the innocence born of necessity in (almost) everyone: one must simply go where one’s desires take her/him.  The will is ignored, except in cases of good actions.

Does it honor human dignity more to truncate the will or to recognize the whole will, both the good and bad parts?

Perhaps that’s a bad question.  Someone who believes that they should “love” (be polite) to everyone would claim that I’m begging the question.  There is only the good will, and so it is recognition of human dignity to be in polite relationships with everyone.  After all, isn’t that what Jesus meant when he said, “Judge not lest ye be judged”?

I suppose you can believe that if you are willing to believe that the New Creation (or Heaven, if you will) will be entirely peopled with politicians and car salesmen.

You cannot love a person by ignoring part of that person.  You can structure a person according to your pride/desire for control, stir up affection for that person, and call that “love” if you wish.  Self-deceit is another essential aspect of a wholly polite life.

To Weaken Pity

Physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for self-preservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being.  Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength – life itself is will to power –: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of this.  – In short, here as elsewhere, watch out for superfluous teleological principles! – such as the drive for preservation (which we owe to Spinoza’s inconsistency–).  This is demanded by method, which must essentially be the economy of principles.

-Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §13

There seems to be a tendency among us to see self-preservation as the root, or “cardinal,” drive in humans (as well as other beings).  Or, perhaps seen a different way, it is the drive about which we can be most sure.  And so we use it as a starting point for understanding all the other drives.  It is simply good practice, we might say with Descartes, to begin with what you know, and attempt to derive the rest from that.  Whatever cannot be derived is left to doubt – perhaps some kind of illusion.

Self-preservation is a difficult drive with which to begin.  We consistently see actions that seem either unrelated to self-preservation or even counter-productive to it.  And so we expand our horizons and establish the concept of a meta-self-preservation, namely the instinct to the survival of the species.  From this, it is claimed, we can derive much more, perhaps everything of importance.

Why the feeling that these are the  most fundamental drives of humanity, and indeed of all living things?  I think these days it is theoretically due to our desire to explain all things through materialistic evolution, though perhaps previously it was the reason why evolution may have been considered in the first place.  Nietzsche’s claim, quoted above, is not inconsequential: What if it is that self-preservation is not the “cardinal drive,” but rather a specific manifestation of a more fundamental drive?  Or, in epistemological terms, self-preservation is not that drive of which we can be most sure.  It is a hypothesis that explains for us some of our actions.  But our fundamental experience is not one of a desire for self-preservation.

Nietzsche claims that our fundamental desire is to discharge our strength.  If you know anything about Nietzsche, you’ll know that “strength” here does not mean simply physical strength, but something much broader.  Strength is discharged in everything from lifting things up and putting them down to writing poetry (well, good poetry).  Note that he offers no argument to support this.  Nietzsche’s interest is in what is most obvious to us – and it seems obvious that self-preservation is not our fundamental drive.  Rather, there is a drive in us to do something, though we may not be sure what – to form, create, impress ourselves upon the world around us so that it reflects us in some way.  Self-preservation is simply an outgrowth of this desire – to die would be to lose the ability to exert strength in this way.

Perhaps, though, the fundamental drive could be the preservation of the species, for this is a much more fertile notion than simple self-preservation.  This fundamental drive has been programmed into us by survival of the fittest.  But, though this might perhaps explain things like some forms of altruism, affection, etc., I would find arguments that it explains such things as the desire for humor, art, and the sense of compassion for other species as requiring a bit of “blind faith” in the system.

Nietzsche’s claim that “discharge of strength” is the fundamental drive requires less credulity, simply because it seems to explain a lot more.

If Nietzsche is right, then I have two suggestions as to what difference this makes. First, evolution, as it is presented these days, fails to explain everything about us.  It can explain many things, but it fails to get the whole picture.  I don’t think we need Nietzsche to tell us this, but the faithful who see evolution as their inerrant scripture, finding in it a complete account of human nature, could perhaps benefit from a little Nietzschean sarcasm.

Second, dissatisfaction cannot always be reduced to a frustration of the drive for self-preservation.   This, too, is so obvious as to not require mention.  Except that it seems that when we hear of anger and frustration over, say, economic circumstances, the implication is that this is due to people being able to barely survive.  And, while this is the case in many places, it is less often the case in the U.S. – a place where I’ve spent most of my life technically in poverty, and yet I’ve rarely if ever suffered from lack of essentials.  (No, I’m not denying that there are those in the U.S. who lack essentials.)

I think more often than we realize, it is our cardinal drive for the discharge of our strength that is frustrated – sometimes by others, sometimes by our own choices.

Let me present a purely hypothetical situation (it could never happen!) that expresses what I am trying to get at: I am now essentially in poverty (at least, according to the U.S.
definition of poverty).  Let us say that I am frustrated.  Is it because I’m hungry?  Not at all.  Am I experiencing a lack of shelter or any other necessity?  Nope.  Unless good insurance is a necessity.  Perhaps I am frustrated because I have lived in apartments my entire adult life and have basically only driven cars that are less-than-dependable (not to mention useless for eliciting the awe of attractive passersby), while I know others who possess three low-mileage cars, two houses, and a boat.  Insofar as the desire for self-preservation is fundamental, then my anger must somehow be an echo of that desire.  After all, simple elementary-school jealousy surely doesn’t explain my mature (I have sex, therefore I am mature) way of looking at the world.  It’s insulting to even suggest that!  The most convenient manner of proving this is to re-define essentials to a higher level (I need only make sure that it is above what I have), and thus can appeal to my dire situation.

But insofar as things are given to me to soften the suffering I experience, I reduce the discharge of my strength.  The world impresses itself upon me, rather than being impressed upon by me.  I become passive.  And, therefore, insofar as Nietzsche is correct, I become more frustrated.  And I appeal again to self-preservation as the root of my frustration – thus demanding more help.  More pity, more passivity, more frustration, more blame.*

In time, as I gain more in agreement with me, we might even impact culture enough to form a new language of morality.  Or perhaps commandeer an old language of morality, one that is widely accepted, and use it for our purposes.  But even the acquisition of the moral superiority of the passive will not quench the thirst for the discharge of strength.  A persistent
frustration, explained in terms of moral superiority and blame, will shortly become hatred.  And all due to a simple inability to understand myself.  Or, perhaps, this is a refusal.

But this is just a hypothetical situation.  It couldn’t happen.  No person, let alone a large group of people, would ever be that ignorant.

*I’m not suggesting that charity is bad.  I am suggesting that if Nietzsche is correct that self-preservation is not our cardinal drive, then there can be manifestations of charity that do more harm than good.  Even Nietzsche supported some forms of charity.  Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that charity could ever do harm.