A Bear - Poles Apart

January 10, 2020 / Congau

Deceitful Democracy

Democracy can never fail because if it does it’s not a democracy anymore. This, of course, is a meaningless observation since the concepts are tied according to definition and nothing could conceivably happen that would prove it wrong. Nevertheless, it is often used as a sophistic trick, probably without realizing that the claim lacks substance.

Democracy needs a certain stability to exist. In times of turmoil it’s not possible to organize proper elections and when attempts are made, they are bound to fail. Then it will not be said that democracy has failed since it was not carried through anyway.

Also, when a seemingly working democracy is suddenly disrupted, it will not constitute a failure since it then goes out of existence, and what doesn’t exist, doesn’t fail.

It has been said that two democracies have never fought a war against each other. Of course not. In a war at least one of the sides, usually the other side, the one you don’t belong to, will be considered an unjust and messy place (why else would you fight it?) and consequently not a democracy.

All other political systems may fail. Communism is generally condemned as a failure whenever it doesn’t work perfectly, which is always, while perfection is not expected of democracy.

The meaning of democracy is sufficiently vague to serve as a label for whatever is on your side; whatever falls relatively neatly into place as a stable mainstream.

Words are deceitful. They are used for persuasion and manipulation, and when their definitions are unclear but their positive sound undisputed, anything can be proven.

Democracy is good, and whenever something is good, it is democracy. If that is the underlying secret premise, it is better not to reach a conclusion, for it will not say what you think it says. Don’t talk about democracy until you know what it means. I will say no more.

January 9, 2020 / Congau

Useful Is Useless

What is truly useful, is useless. The best things in life serve no practical purpose; they are useless because they can’t be used for anything else than its own enjoyment. On the other hand, what is useful exists to achieve something other than itself, so itself it is useless.

We want to be happy; that is the ultimate goal of everything we do, but usually that idea is remote from the immediate needs of our daily life. Before we can think of happiness, we simply need to stay alive and secure the bare necessities. When that is taken care of, we need a certain comfort to spare us from inconveniences and then we need more comfort. It is all very useful since it improves our basic condition and better enables us to… to do what we really want, presumably.

So all that useful stuff is only needed to get somewhere else; we don’t need it for its own sake. What would happen if we reached a state without inconveniences and all those useful items were in place? It would be a useless condition if we didn’t use it for something we really enjoyed, something that was not useful.

An ultimate goal and a final purpose can’t be useful since it is the end of the chain. Whatever makes us happy is useless since it is not supposed to bring something else, but it is the most useful of all since it makes us happy.

Bread and butter and a pair of boots – so useful and so useless.

A house and a car – so what?

Give me the painting of the Sistine Madonna and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Draw a picture and play a song, read a poem – it is useful.

Let the wheels of the economy grind and toil – it is useless.

January 8, 2020 / Congau

Our Assassins

The unacceptable becomes acceptable when our people do it. Outrage and disgust are feelings reserved for our enemies, those barbaric others who are expected to behave shockingly. Do you remember when the Russians presumably sent their agents to Britain to kill a former spy? The outrage was near universal: Imagine a state attempting to murder someone in another country! In our civilization we would never dream of doing such a thing!

Do you know what just happened in Iraq? The head of a major Western state assassinated one of the leaders of another state. There’s no reason to put it any less bluntly since it all happened in the open and everyone involved is confirming the facts. But of course, that’s not quite how it is presented. The focus is on whether it was a prudent thing to do and Trump’s erratic behavior is certainly recognized, but this is something more than just another false step.

People believe there’s a difference between modern Western civilization and the practices of Eastern despots and our own savage past, and any contradictory evidence is likely to be interpreted to fit this belief. We just don’t want to see it. We are ready to be shocked out of principle when foreign states commit crimes on our soil, but the most open attack by our side is readily explained away.

An attack in war, cruel as it is, seems to have the redeeming quality of anonymity. One is not aiming at killing any specific person and the lives lost can be counted as collateral damage. Killing a specific government official, on the other hand, is political assassination, and we didn’t think our boys were engaged in that, did we?

The moral superiority of the West is a myth that gets crushed again and again. Why do we still believe in it?

January 7, 2020 / Congau

Ignorance

I know nothing. I can’t know anything. Knowledge is impossible.

But I’m not a skeptic.

There are objects of knowledge, so something can be known. We just can’t know them. Therefore we have to believe; that’s all we can do, and that we must do.

Knowledge is having an absolute certainty that something is a fact and having it for the right reason. Also, it must in fact be true.

How would that be possible? We may be dreaming; our senses may betray us; people may lie to us; we may be delusional.

Truth is not enough for knowledge. Suppose someone wanted to lie to you but told you something that accidentally happened to be true. Then you wouldn’t know what you think you knew, even if it was true.

Suppose all our knowledge was like that.

Suppose there was a small box. Inside it there was either something or nothing; there was either a marble or there was not a marble. Your friend had never looked inside, but he told you it contained a marble and you believed him. Now, suppose there was really a marble inside; did you know? No, you didn’t.

Do we have sufficient reason to know everything we think we know? Of course not. We are told and we believe. Even our firmest convictions are insufficiently based. How do you know that the earth is round?

I believe that the earth is round. I’m not a skeptic.

We can’t know anything, but things can be known. The earth is either round or flat; it is not both. The earth has a shape and therefore it can be known.

There are facts and there are truths and we must believe in them or else we can’t do anything.

There is no knowledge, only belief, and that’s why we must believe.

January 6, 2020 / Congau

Irrelevant Facts

Impressions are everything and facts are irrelevant. Advertisers and political spinners have always known that and in these days of Trumpian denial we all notice how facts are fading away into oblivion. It’s not that we really forget what has just happened. The facts are still stored somewhere in our mind, but since no one talks about them anymore, it’s as if they don’t count.

For example, we know very well that the US is heavily present in Iraq. We remember clearly how they invaded the country and installed a new government and how their soldiers kept on fighting for a long time thereafter. We are aware that an Iraqi government cannot be formed without American acceptance.

Still, mainstream media is far from blaming the Iraqi misery on the US. We hear about corrupt Iraqi politicians, religious fanaticism, IS terror and above all Iran. Now we are suddenly told that that eastern neighbor is the main culprit. What happened to the others?

How can we know the truth about what’s happening thousands of miles away? We have to believe what we are told, and most Westerns are only informed by the major news outlets which are of course biased. But our problem is not the lack of facts. We may assume that all the basic data are correct and that we are not being outright lied to. Everything is probably true and if we take the trouble to put the facts together, we might get a decent picture of the situation. We may be inclined to blame one agent more than another, but wouldn’t it be fair to assume that all the forces fighting for influence in this war ridden country have contributed to the present situation?

But of course, if you have already decided who is good and who is evil, then facts are an unnecessary burden.

January 5, 2020 / Congau

Not Guilty

The law convicted you, and you care about the law. You know you were innocent, your intentions were pure, but the formal letters of commandment are clear. It says: “Thou shalt not”, but you did. It is so simple: You are guilty.

Religious laws are damning, but human laws are just as harsh. The denouncing cry is always heard: Illegal! Illegal! As if that is the worst that can be said.

It may be illegal, but why is it so? The authorities decided, but who are they? Do you live in a state run by gods?

It may be in your best interest to obey the law. You don’t want to be punished; it hurts to pay a fine. Often social order is more important than the trivial content of the law, and you might as well obey. And sure, some laws are good: Do obey them.

But. Your ultimate guilt is not decided by written formulas and inflexible legalities. Sometimes it is wrong to break the law, but sometimes it is right. When?

When? you ask. If I answered that question precisely, I would be making a law as stiff and rigid as any other. Break bad laws and obey the good ones. But who is to decide which is which? You.

Only you and your conscience can decide, and your guilt or innocence is based on that decision alone. No one can hide behind a bad law.

The burden is on your shoulders and a bad law cannot acquit you; the weight of guilt may still be yours.

But don’t despair for the opposite is also true: A bad law cannot convict you. What does it matter if those flawed rules and courts of injustice heap guilty verdicts on your head if the Truth absolves you?

Then you are truly Not Guilty.

January 4, 2020 / Congau

Beyond Responsibility

Naturally we ought to fulfill our responsibilities. Whatever we have committed ourselves to doing must be done, or else we will be directly to blame for the bad consequences that will follow. Once you have taken a job, given birth to a child or just made a promise, you have created duties for yourselves and it would be bad to neglect them. Most people would agree with this.

But our direct responsibilities, important as they are, are not the limit of ethics; far from it. Beyond responsibility there’s an infinite gray area of duties that are not really duties but nevertheless a part of the ethical domain.

Some think that once they have fulfilled their immediate obligations they can retire into their private sphere of superior righteousness and have no more concern with the well-being of the world. “It’s not my responsibility,” they say, and that’s the end of that.

It’s not your duty to be nice, is it? The grumpy citizen who meticulously obeys every minor regulation, sneers at cats and children and quarrels with his neighbors, thinks himself a responsible and moral person, but he is hardly a good man.

It’s not your responsibility to help a stranger who has collapsed on the street or to rescue a drowning child, but I hope we can agree that you would be doing something bad if you just ignored them.

When do we have to step beyond the borders of our immediate responsibilities and do a good deed? How close should a suffering person be for us to lend him a hand? There are no rules that can give an answer to these questions; we have responsibilities beyond our responsibilities, but no independent judge can tell us how far.

We are neither guilty nor not guilty. Ethics is much more complicated.

January 3, 2020 / Congau

Guilt by Omission

Are we only responsible for what we do? Can we be blamed for what we don’t do if we have made no previous commitment?

Suppose you are walking along the road minding your own business and you come upon a child lying face down in a pool about to drown. With only a slight effort on your part you could turn the child around and save its life. Would you do it? Of course, you would. But suppose someone didn’t do it. Suppose he found the slight inconvenience a trifle too much and just didn’t bother. Could we blame him? After all the child was nothing to him and he was in no position of responsibility towards it. Or wasn’t he? What do you think?

I hope you didn’t think for long. I hope the answer is as obvious to you as it is to me. Of course, he can be blamed. Of course, he should be blamed. Utterly and totally blamed, reproached and scolded for such an outrageous negligence. I hope you agree with me.

But I’m afraid everyone doesn’t. Some sophists actually get so hung up on the formalities of their ethical rules that they are incapable of perceiving how we are morally connected with the world we live in.

Sometimes the difference between doing and not doing is a pure formality. If the occurrence of an event is dependent on your pushing or not pushing a button and your finger is ready to do either, you are equally to blame if the mischief follows from your action or your inaction. Suppose you knew in advance that if you pushed a button someone would get killed: Then, if you push it, you are guilty. Now suppose you knew that if you didn’t push it someone would get killed: Then, if you don’t push it, you are guilty.

We can do a lot of bad by not doing.

January 1, 2020 / Congau

Revenge

We recognize the thirst for revenge; that poisonous urge to inflict evil on evil done unto us. It’s a treacherous feeling for it can hardly be quenched. It’s a search for relief by means of a remedy that cannot relieve. Pain can’t be transferred from one person to the next; it can only spread, adding misery to misery.

It’s illogical and unreasonable, but we feel it. Rational man uses his reason to figure out ways to make the world a worse place and his own position in it more intolerable. It is wrong, but it feels right.

Who told you to listen to your feelings and recognize your needs? Someone who wants you to suffer? Someone who knows you are your own worst enemy?

We are wronged all the time. They bump into us because they don’t care or because they care, and we pass it along when we get the chance. They sow anger and we reap it; we sow it and they reap. There is no end to it.

Looking at it from above, it makes no sense. Stories of family feuds are tales of ridicule. The histories of war are chains of senseless action and reaction carried through with vengeful ignorance and otherwise little logic.

We must be in the middle of the fight to understand the feeling, but then there is nothing to understand. An eye for an eye doesn’t give back an eye, but the half blind still craves one.

Reason is not expected from someone who’s blinded by range, but it should be possible from an uninvolved distance. But no, the man of reason is not recognized. The man of emotion is acknowledged by law and his right to revenge is granted.

We punish. The state takes revenge on our behalf. Does it make us feel better?

December 31, 2019 / Congau

Democratic Pretext

The problem with authoritarian states is not that they are authoritarian. The problem is that they are not like us: not like the healthy Western mainstream. All those roguish states, from the nasty Russia and Turkey to the naughty Poland and Hungary, are primarily scoffed at for not adhering to our pure democratic principles, as if their constantly devious politics were of only secondary concern.

How hypocritical this worry about democracy is, is obvious in the case of Saudi Arabia; it escapes with only light criticism although its authoritarian government makes most others pale.

What we want is a world that’s obedient to our power, but since we can hardly express such a blunt demand, we pretend to care about lofty principles.

There is reason to believe that if only those aberrant countries would adjust to a more middle European climate, they would also fall into place politically. If they, instead of having one dominant government force, were reduced to a more balanced European parliament where domestic bickering occupies the principal attention, there would be less room for external opposition.

If Russia were divided into fractions like a European democracy, its peculiarities would cease to be expressed and the neutralizing effect of compromise would smoothen its sharp edges and make it compliant to the West. That’s the underlying reason why Russian authoritarianism is such a problem: it’s the only way it can secure its contrasting features and vigorously oppose the Western mainstream.

European and American concern for democracy would have been touching if it were honest. All instances of double and triple standards should be quite obvious to any observer, but it’s curious how we still find the original arguments convincing. The spread of democracy would mean the spread of Western power, but we still think the subject is democracy.

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	Quý on Fate
	Congau on Conscience
	Migelli Bin Origen on Conscience
	Congau on The Danger of Philosophy
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