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August 19, 2019 / Congau

Freeish Will

The will is not free. We can’t do whatever we want and choose what we like. We can only take the next step from where we are already standing; we are bound by the circumstances and our previous actions. Complete freedom would require new and clean sheets of paper where you could write your life afresh every day untainted by anything recorded in the past. A free will would necessitate an unlimited imagination as to what could be done at any given moment, but the only options that occur to us are those that our habits and routines have narrowly defined.

You could go wild at this very moment. You could fly off to the Amazons and hunt for crocodiles or perform a step dance show in the town square, but you are not likely to do that. Instead you act safely within the limits of what is expected of you and what you have come to expect of yourself. Our will is tied up by our constrained perspective.

But still, even our bondage has its limits. Within our narrow minded range of possibility there is something that has a semblance of freedom. Sometimes we actually make a choice between coffee and tea and you could decide to raise your left hand at this moment. The choice is certainly biased and if you did raise your hand right now it was because I reminded you of that possibility, but in spite of that you are not quite a puppet.

There is a tiny piece of free will in us and although it can never grow big it can be expanded. You may feel compelled to go with the flow, but you don’t have to add your force to that irresistible current. You must perhaps bow your will to the circumstances, but you don’t always have to do it willingly. At least once in a while you can try: Disobey the tyranny of expectations and feel the tiny sparks of your freeish will.

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August 18, 2019 / Congau

Blind Injustice

There is no justice in the justice system. There can’t be any.

Justice means that everyone is to receive what they deserve, but who is to say what they deserve?

Every case is different. Every crime has its individual history and its peculiar measure of guilt. Two people formally committing the same transgression are not equally guilty. One of them can be somewhat excused given circumstances and biography while the other one looks like a plain hardened criminal, but who is to know? Who can scrutinize the depths of the human heart and all the intricacies of past events?

Judges and juries sometimes try, but the task is doomed to fail. Nothing short of divine power would be required to find the true quantum of culpability and if that were possible the human system of justice would be redundant.

The law is written to make up for human imperfection. It reduces unique actions and specific time and place to sweeping generalities. “Like cases should be treated alike,” that is the basic principle of lawful justice and it arrogantly ignores that no two cases are in fact alike.

Still, a mere human judge cannot act otherwise. He is a subordinate ally of the cruel Lady Justice – that blindfolded woman who dangles her powerful scales and swings her sword without mercy.

Justice is blind, but blindness cannot be justice. There is no solution to this contradiction, but society cannot survive without it. It must protect itself against its delinquents and regrettably it must punish; not because justice demands it, for strictly speaking there is no justice, but because anarchy would be a greater threat.

Courts are prone to make mistake, so don’t believe in them. A verdict is never final and innocence is likely to be punished. Trusting human justice is superstition.

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July 30, 2019 / Congau

To Kill a Flower

Is it wrong to pick a flower? No, do enjoy its beauty. Is it wrong to trample on it? Yes, that would hurt. Not the flower, to be sure, but yourself.

It is bad to ruin what is beautiful. Doesn’t it bother you to see something destroyed for no reason? A flower? A tree? A forest? There used to be a picturesque cliff in the landscape, but they mined it in the quest for minerals and now it is an ugly gaping hole; a wound in nature and in your soul. Doesn’t it hurt?

Ethics is not just what we directly do to people, to ourselves, to animals and sensitive beings; we can also injure nature. How? Environmentalists tell us: “The environment is the common possession of mankind.” They may be right, but that is not all there is to it. Holism, Stoicism, Buddhism and other religions explain it to us: “Everything is one.” They may have a point, but it’s not the whole story.

We don’t have to expand every little concern into global issues. Every small point must not be backed by grand principles. Sometimes a flower is just a flower; beautiful in itself.

The seed should be allowed to grow into a flowering beauty if there is no reason to tear it away. Why would you trample on it? Why tear it away before it has reached its full bloom? Why ruin anything if it’s not necessary?

Every small organism has its own purpose: to fulfill its inherent potential. It’s a pleasure to watch a harmonious process, so don’t take that joy away from yourself. And if you don’t have the time to enjoy it, at least make sure that you don’t step on it. Leave it for the next person to appreciate or just let it be there for itself. You don’t want to hurt yourself by destroying what works so delightfully well. Do yourself that favor.

Filed under ethics, Philosophy
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July 29, 2019 / Congau

Imperfect Perfection

Perfection can never be achieved, but still it is an ideal. That is not a contradiction. Ideals as such cannot be attained and that’s what makes them ideals. They are images of something that doesn’t exist in the physical world, but they still have their origin in existing things.

Whenever we look at an object or a phenomenon, we may be tempted to imagine what it would look like if all its shortcomings were removed and it appeared in glorious splendor. Such a fantasy may be quite an innocent temptation. It’s not at all bad to stimulate one’s imagination and let the mind fly away to a world that never was. It doesn’t hurt to dream about a better world and picture things as they would look if it they were improved. It may even serve as a useful incentive for progress. But what would be bad, and what is often disastrous, is to demand instant gratification and launch a revolution that aims for all or nothing. You can’t get it all, so the result is likely to be nothing.

Aiming for perfection leads to certain misery but moving toward it can bring you to a better place. Even Utopia, a fantasy world, can be practically useful if soberly understood. By imagining an ideal one gets a sense of direction. That ideal may be infinitely far away but at least it may give us a perception of the immediate path of improvement that is to be traveled. Only when knowing the direction, can the next step be known.

Perfection doesn’t exist. It is the mathematical limit that can never be reached but can always be approached. It cannot be grasped, so don’t try to grasp it. It cannot be seen, so don’t try to look at it. But it can be envisioned and felt and imperfectly understood. It is nowhere but it can lead the way.

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July 26, 2019 / Congau

Boris Trump

Trump has been elected new prime minister of Britain. It wasn’t supposed to be possible. Only Americans can choose a clown as their supreme leader, but now the sober Brits have accomplished it too. What has happened? Has the British national character finally made the transition and become indistinguishable from its overgrown offspring across the Atlantic? Well, an Americanization has clearly taken place, but not in the people; it’s the system that’s suddenly changed.

The dignified Westminster model used to be a guarantee against wild firebrands who tried to seduce the people with their entertaining demagoguery. Some of them did get elected to parliament, but they could never reach the top because they would not be chosen among their peers. In Britain the leader of the country was picked by the members of parliament. He sprang from their midst, but the procedure was fully democratic since they were already elected by the people.

But now that has changed. The boss is now chosen separately and in the American fashion he is independent of the national assembly. He may therefore be opposed to the will of those who represent the will of the people. In America that can somehow be justified since both Congress and the president are separately elected by the same people and if they get a Trump, it’s their own doing.  The US president is an odd individual always partly opposed to the assembly, but the UK prime minister was always united with the assembly. He was, until the election of the party leaders was Americanized. Now any odd duck can appear, and so did Donald Johnson.

The United Kingdom is not a parliamentary democracy anymore. It now only has half a parliament and the other half consists of a president who is not even elected by the people but by a mere 160 000 party members. What happens when they get a veto against the people? Who do you get? Well, you know his name.

Filed under political theory, Politics
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July 24, 2019 / Congau

Why Be Ethical?

What if nothing is good or bad. What if there’s no difference between right or wrong. What if nothing matters…

Well, let’s suppose there’s no higher purpose to our lives, no god telling us what is right and wrong, no revealed truth in the universe. Let’s assume there’s no reason why we are here. Still, we are here, we know that for sure even if that’s the only thing we know. And once here, doesn’t it make sense to make the best of it, to make things as comfortable as possible?

If for some inexplicable reason you woke up one morning and found yourself on a remote island or in an unknown world, you would soon try to make your plight more tolerable for yourself, wouldn’t you? You would make an effort to relieve the misery of your situation and make it a little more agreeable. Whether or not that would be a good thing to do, at least it would be the natural thing to do. It would be the logical thing to do, because obviously you don’t want to suffer more than necessary.

This is our human situation. We may not know what is right, but at least it seems natural to make it comfortable where we are. That is the logical beginning of all ethics.

At the first instance it is not a question of what is good and right, but what is natural and logical given the circumstances. But good and right soon follows from it. Whenever we say something is good, it is when we think it will lead to the desired result. If you are a pianist it’s good to practice playing the piano, and if you live on earth, it’s good to practice making that situation an agreeable one.

If you don’t care about ethics, it means you don’t care about your life.

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July 8, 2019 / Congau

Enjoy Your Free Ride

Have you ever been a free rider? Did you take the bus without paying? Did you feel ashamed? Should you feel ashamed? Take it easy, mate. You didn’t hurt the bus driver. The bus company didn’t get injured. No one suffered anything from your action. No one is any poorer. The moral judge may acquit you.

Ethics is all about doing good to others and avoid hurting them. If nobody is hurt by what you do, your action would be ethically neutral, so help yourself, jump on the bus and enjoy your free ride.

“But what if everyone did like that?” objects our moralist. “If no one paid for the bus, public transportation would not be possible and society would lose.” Sure, if everyone did… If your small action really had the result that everyone followed you and did the same, it would of course be damaging to society. But you know that’s not the case. You are probably too insignificant for anyone to imitate you, let alone the whole society. There’s just no connection between what you do and what everyone else does. You should only worry about what your behavior actually leads to, not what would happen if you lived in a fantasy world. In the real world you are innocent.

Still, before you enjoy that free ride, there’s another thing you should consider. Other people will surely not be hurt, but are you sure you won’t hurt yourself? If you really couldn’t afford that bus trip, if the only real alternative would have been a long an exhausting walk, then save yourself the trouble and ride along for free. But if you could afford that ticket, if the measly coins it costs you would not set you back too much, then pay up!

Don’t be greedy for your greed may hurt you. You can’t damage the bus; society will not be harmed; no other person must suffer, but it may not be good for yourself. Ethics is difficult. Think twice.

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July 3, 2019 / Congau

Boring Matter

Bishop Berkeley, the 18th century Irish philosopher, will have us believe that matter doesn’t exist. It is all an illusion in our mind, he says. The physical world has no being and neither do our bodies. Well, none of us really believe in Berkeley. Of course the world exists, we don’t doubt it, but still we can’t prove him wrong. How do we know that what we see and touch is really there and not just our imagination? We don’t know; we just think so.

But even if we feel convinced that physical objects are really there, they don’t mean anything to us until we have consciously observed them and processed them in our mind. Matter as such is dull and shapeless. We can use it for our animal existence. We walk on the ground, we breathe the air, we sit on chairs, but until we are aware of what we are doing and interpret our experience, it is like nothing. Nature as such is not beautiful; a working machine is not interesting; a scream is not frightening. Sights are meaningless colors and sounds are pointless noise. There is no music until you recognize it.

We think matter exists, but while it remains mere matter to us, its existence is a trifle. We must make it interesting and lift it to a higher level; to a human level or, (to follow the bishop) to a divine level. We must transfer the physical world into the world of ideas and the more ideal the more real it will be.

A chair is really a chair the moment it is recognized as such, but even then, it is probably a rather prosaic object that doesn’t inspire much feeling of reality. On the other hand, the things that we can contemplate, what we feel and touch and attentively listen to, the things we cherish and let dwell in our mind, those things increase in reality. When matter becomes the highest idea, it transforms into art; it takes off from the physical world and becomes real reality.

It doesn’t matter if Berkeley was right or not. Matter may be real, but mind is more real.

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July 2, 2019 / Congau

A Nobody

You are insignificant and so am I. I’m sorry to say. We don’t contribute. Each one of us does not add his tiny piece to the total; an individual does not have a share in the mass; a whole is not the sum of its parts.

The ocean doesn’t consist of drops of water. It’s an entire mass; a single organism.

A crowd is like an ocean. There is no individuality in it. It flows and moves as a single force and everything in it must run along. You cannot resist a mighty river.

Have you ever tried to go against the flow? Maybe you have. You grab a root on the bank of the river and hold on to it. At that moment you are an individual. But the water rushes past you; crowds of people trample by and they utterly ignore you.

Have you tried to resist fashion? Have you defied public opinion? Maybe you have, some people do, but at that moment you are outside the flow and cannot contribute to it. When you are inside it (most of the time we all are), you also don’t contribute since you are not an individual at that time. Either way you are nothing for the crowd.

True, political leaders may sway the masses; the odd youtube video goes viral; a celebrity becomes the talk of the town. That, however, are examples of individuals who accidentally work on the masses; they are not themselves inside them.

We don’t contribute when following. You don’t even add our microscopic force for the river of the crowd would have flowed with equal power without you in it. You can vote or not; the outcome will be the same and the pollsters know where it’s going without asking you. You can follow the trend or be an outsider; sociologists don’t include you anyway.

Do you find this discouraging? You shouldn’t. You are nothing inside the crowd, but outside of it you are yourself.

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July 1, 2019 / Congau

The Art of Pleasure

Art is the highest pleasure, for art is idea. All other pleasures are mixed with physical matter and animal functions; only art is pure mind.

Please don’t let this disturb you. You are certainly allowed to have your physical pleasures. Enjoy your good meal and erotic satisfaction but be aware that you are not an animal and that the truest pleasure of all activities is in the mind. If animals and humans sometimes seem to enjoy the same things, humans can enjoy them more because an unlimited range of refinement is available to the human mind and every experience is potentially unique.

Now art is what is most uniquely enjoyable for strictly speaking it can never be copied. A painting is not the canvas it is painted on and music needs no instruments. Books are not written on paper.

Pleasure is in the mind and everything that is truly pleasurable for a human being, has an artistic dimension. It is the creative uniqueness that makes things enjoyable for us in a deeper sense; it goes beyond the passing moment.

Of course the ultimate instant of artistic expression is art proper and that makes it the quintessential articulation of pleasure. All other human activities partly serve the mundane purpose of being useful for something else, to sustain animal life and keep the economy running, or it is an empty time killer and relief from boredom. Only art is valuable for its own sake making human life worth living.

Luckily there is some art in many things and that makes life worth living even if you are not an artist. There is some art in sports; there may be art in your stamp collection. There is art in a good joke; art in a good conversation. There is art in sex and art in love; there is art in a delicious meal. But above all: There is art in art. Enjoy!

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