One can lie a lot by telling the truth.
The information that is given is not so important, for what counts is what is received. When facts are poured out in the right portion, an impression may be created that is counter to the truth. Then it matters little that all the facts are right.
Therefore advertising is always a lie. It is not important what is said, only what we imagine, and that the advertisers know. They also know that we don’t care to control if our impressions are true. So they carry on their business believing to be honest if they are formally correct. That’s the way they cheat us, and that’s how they cheat themselves. Their truth is deceitful.
Isn’t that worse than a good and honest lie?
Does anyone still remember Ralph Nader, the third party candidate who ran for the 2000 election? He was a mere trifle who had a catastrophic significance on the world. The number of votes that he got was not enormous, but it was enough to change the election… and the world. Bush won by a margin of a few hundred votes and there’s no doubt that he would have lost if this Nader had not attended.
What a responsibility is resting on Nader’s shoulders! A meaningless invasion of Iraq and the Middle East plunged into chaos and war, that is the result of the Bush presidency and none of that would have occurred without Nader.
Formally Nader didn’t do anything wrong. Presumably anyone has the right to run for election and fight for what he believes in. But morality is not a formality, and the same action may sometimes be good and sometimes bad. We are not machines that can be programmed to right conduct and thereby believe that we will avoid all guilt. Sometimes the most innocent action may have fatal consequences. We cannot predict everything and our ignorance will often acquit us, but it happens, as in the case of Nader, that the predictable risk is great.
Nader is an extreme example. He risked the well-being of the world to make a comparatively unimportant point. Poor man!
Art is to create. To create is to make something out of nothing. Art is to express ideas with physical means.
All expressions of ideas are art, even the simplest and most trivial ones, because art in itself is not a badge of honor. Bad art is also art.
When you are confronted with a piece of art that in your opinion is utter rubbish, you should not exclaim “This is not art!” Yes, it could very well be art, but it may be bad art. The artist has probably expressed an idea even if it is a banal and boring one.
You see apparently formless colors on a canvas. Is that art? It depends if it expresses an idea. If the paint was splashed on the surface by a monkey or a cow’s tail, then it cannot be art even if it is strikingly similar to what an artist may have produced. Obviously the monkey had no idea and the cow’s tail left only arbitrary marks. If a human being also mixes colors in such a mechanical and thoughtless way, it is no more art.
But that says nothing about the value of the object. Chance and nature can make a lot of beauty and so can a human stroke of luck. By all means pay for it, but it is not art.
Some say there is no objective truth. We live in the age of tolerance and liberalism and no one is supposed to force their views on others. We can hardly be sure about anything ourselves, and therefore we should of course be equipped with an amount of healthy skepticism toward everything we see and hear. Still, from this it does not follow that nothing is objective.
We all have certain opinions about what we experience around us. We receive impressions and from those we draw conclusions about the world. We think that the rain makes the plants grow and we think the government has a good or a bad policy.
Whenever we have an opinion about anything, whatever it is, we think that our view is the right one, and accordingly we do think that there is such a thing as a right view. Granted, we are fully aware of our own imperfection and know that we cannot be a hundred percent certain about anything, but the fact that we care about having opinions at all that must mean that we actually believe that something is true. We would never venture to make a claim about anything if that was not our underlying conviction.
When some people still deny the existence of objective truths, that is probably due to some confusion about what is meant by objectivity. Objective certainty is admittedly not possible and nothing can be absolutely and finally proven. Objective agreement is also impossible, as there will always be someone who perceives even the most simple things differently. But the existence of an objective truth is not dependent on what anyone thinks and believes. Maybe we are all wrong, but the right answer may still be out there.
Whenever we strive for knowledge about anything, we are searching for the objectively right answer, even though we cannot be sure that we have found it if we find it. But it is the belief that it exists that makes us search at all.
You have rights. That is an undeniable fact, because it is written down in the laws of your country. The state promises to protect you, and it is usually reasonable to expect a promise to be kept. Even if the government would promise you something quite ridiculous, free candies say, that item becomes your right. There is nothing inherently moral about a right. It should be respected, not because it belongs to you as a native possession, but because it has been given you as a part of a system where you are a participant. The state should keep its promises, as should anyone else, and that is the only moral element of your rights.
But this, of course, is not the way rights are generally perceived. They seem to be seen as free gifts that have come from nowhere, but still belong to you from your birth. But how can that be? The fact that you were born doesn’t imply anything else. You were born, and then so what? Logically your birth in itself doesn’t give you a right to life, let alone to anything else.
Only if you see your own feeble existence as a part of a greater scheme, is it possible to think in terms of rights and law. A ruler of the universe, a god, must be introduced to place it all within a system. If God has granted you rights, then you have rights, just as the state or any other power may be able to give you rights.
But the modern secular world is not allowed to presume a god. Therefore to be able to speak in universally acceptable categories, we must disregard the possibility of a universal lawgiver. Further, where there is no lawgiver, there is no law, and where there is no law, there is no right.
You may be happy that you were born, but that sheer fact gives you no reason to expect or demand anything else. Just because you were lucky and won the lottery, that cannot give you the right to make demands. On the contrary, one might think, you should be grateful for what you already have and not ask for more.
A duty is what we must do. Isn’t that a simple and reasonable definition that we can all agree on? We must do it, not because we are physically forced to, but because we are bound by some commitment that we have previously made. These “musts” are luckily limited in number since our commitments are limited.
Now some philosophers seem to want to extend our duties to the entire domain of morality. Then they actually count among the duties not only the things we must do, but also what we should and could do. That, alas, makes our duties infinite and there is no way we could ever fulfill them. There is literally no end to all the morally good acts that we could do.
We could for example help the poor, yes, we definitely should, but the moment that moral advice is made a duty, it opens up a bottomless ocean of moral requirements that can never conceivably be filled. Which poor are you to help? All the poor of this world? Impossible of course. As many as you can? How many is that? You could work night and day to alleviate poverty, but surely, even on the brink of exhaustion you could probably still do a little more, and a little more…
And then there are all the other good deeds that we could possibly do, and they would be neglected if we focused all our energy on poverty. We would have to ignore our duties to do our duties, and in any case we would be infinitely far from being dutiful. The saint would be no closer to it than the blackest sinner.
As a moral guideline the notion of duty becomes meaningless once it extends beyond all limits. What is the point of trying if you cannot even begin to succeed? Whenever you are told that there is something you must do, it has to be possible for you to actually do it, if not the requirement will have no meaning. You must not do what you cannot do. No one can demand that you do what is physically impossible, and therefore your duties have to be within the range of what is possible. Your duties are limited.
Our duties are acquired by ourselves. We get them when we meet our fellow man on our way. We may of course avoid him and lead our life in solitude without duties. It would be a life of freedom, true, but also one of sadness, destitution and misery. Very few people aim at this terrible perfect freedom. We are content to pay for our social needs with the currency of Duty, happily sacrificing some of that frightening freedom.
But luckily we don’t give it all away. We only have as many duties as we have willingly conceded and the rest is freedom. It is as if a contract is signed when entering into a relationship with others. I want to enjoy the befit of your company or your support and in return I am willing to give you whatever may be reasonably expected of me. It may be debated what is reasonable and your own conscience is the main and fallible judge, but however big or small the obligation may be, it does exist. It comes into being the moment you agree to let another creature cross your path. Then the contract is signed, and then you have a duty. Then, but only then.
Only then. That is indeed a relief, isn’t it? Our duties may be severe, weighing heavily upon us, but they are limited. We get into contact only with some people, quite many perhaps, but very few compared to the masses that inhabit this earth. A tiny number demand our deepest care, some more will require some slight attention, but the vast majority will be far beyond our narrow view. We will never see them, and if they exist at all, their existence will be an abstraction to us. We have no duties toward them, for duties are concrete and abstract duties are meaningless. You have an obligation toward this and that person whom you have already encountered, but toward everyone else you are free.
There lives a man in some foreign country. His name is Mr. Smith, but you don’t know that. You have never met him and you never will and his existence will remain hidden from you. Can you possibly have any duties toward him? You cannot.
Do your duty, though.
Where do they come from all these duties that are weighing so heavily on feeble human beings? We were all born free, were we not, but still we are perpetually loaded by obligations that we have to perform. They force us and prevent us from doing what we want. Duty is the opposite of freedom.
Were we not born free after all? Did we come into this world already encumbered with demands about what we had to do? Were we born with chains? No, freedom was our first birthday present and it was a real freedom excluding all obligations. If we are no longer perfectly free, it is because we have lost this freedom, and if we now have duties, it is because they have later caught us. We were born without duties.
Nobody can demand anything of an infant who without guilt has come into this world. It did not cause its own existence, it never asked to be born, and therefore nobody can rightfully require it to do anything.
It is as if someone had kidnapped you and carried you away to a foreign land. There you were to live. Perhaps you were forced to work. Maybe guardians were pointing guns at you to make you obey. You had to work, but of course it was not your duty. (A duty is whatever one has to do even though one is not physically forced to do so.)
This is the situation for the little child who has just arrived in our foreign world. Because it has never consented to its own birth, nobody can make demands on it. The infant is perfectly free.
Thus we have all come here; free and without duties. But now most of us do have duties indeed. What has happened? We have acquired these obligations by ourselves. We have deliberately exchanged our precious innate liberty against something that is even more valuable; human contact.
The newborn cannot remain in life for long without care. Someone nurses it, gives it food and warmth, and soon the little one is getting actively involved in its own presence. It contributes to its own life when interacting with others and then, slowly, duties will arise. We were all taken care of when we were small and defenseless, and we are still dependent on our fellow human beings. That obliges us.
The heat of debate often increases when the object of disagreement is lacking in substance, and nothing seems to kindle public feelings as much as empty symbols. Unjust distribution of scarce resources may certainly ignite anger, but the collective mind only gets really furious when merely symbolic items are perceived as unjustly distributed.
The debate about gay marriages (yesterday’s blog post) is a case in point and so is another dispute that has recently erupted in the same world leading land. In the midst of violence and destitution there seems to be nothing more urgent to discuss than which flags should be flying on which roof tops.
A certain piece of fabric dyed with certain colors in combination, is supposed to be loaded with subtle meaning. Historians are summoned to explain its detailed past significance and laymen readily testify about their present unfailing emotions. Is it a banner of hatred or one of patriotic love? Does this cloth embody evil or good? You may search for an answer in history or in your heart and be equally convinced about its validity, but the reality of the matter you can never reach, for it doesn’t exist.
Symbols are nothing in themselves and standing alone they are devoid of reality.
But the flag represents a reality, you say. How can it when there is no agreement about what it means? The words of a language are symbolic representations of some reality and they function as such because the speakers of that language agree on their meaning. If there were no agreement, there would be no meaning and the words would not stand for anything and be mere sounds. Now, no one knows what a flag stands for. There may be some vague conception about elusive terms like “country,” “people,” “freedom,” “blood,” and “bravery,” but for any two persons those mental images would surely look different. (And in the case of the confederate flag the variety seems to be particularly great.)
It could be tempting to strike a conciliatory note and say that the flag means whatever it means to any one person, but that would be as nonsensical as granting a meaning to words in a language that is only spoken by one individual. Besides, one shouldn’t pretend that there is meaning in a meaningless conflict and thereby continue the struggle for nothing when there’s no shortage of real problems in the world.
I am not a conservative, and I have nothing against gay people, or any other people, choosing to live however they want, but I’m against gay marriage. Or rather, to be more exact, I’m against legalized gay marriage.
The problem we are dealing with here is actually quite confused, for what does it really mean to say that something is legal or illegal? Normally something is legal when the law allows you to do it with impunity, and illegal when there’s a threat of punishment. It is for example legal to eat apple pie, but illegal to steal someone’s pie and the law threatens to take action if there’s a violation of those principles. But in the case of marriage the situation is different, for how can marital law possibly be broken. If gay marriages are illegal, gay couples simply cannot marry, whereas if stealing is illegal, it is still very possible to steal. It is rather odd to have a law that regulates an action that wouldn’t have existed if the law itself had not existed. Without marital laws there would be no marriages.
But hold on, that doesn’t sound intuitively right. People have married in all kinds of societies in all periods of history without there being a government bureaucracy issuing formal licenses. Only in the modern nation state is marriage self-defined within the law. True, in former times the authorities may have pronounced certain liaisons illegal and then forcibly have broken them up, but that they could do because the institution of marriage existed independently of the state. So it must also be today. Marriage is in truth a social institution not one that comes into being by the word of an anonymous state. Therefore it should be irrelevant whether a government accepts gay marriages or not because as long as any couple is allowed to live together without the interference of the law, their conduct is already legal.
What more is being asked for? Social recognition? That doesn’t come from empty law paragraphs anyway.
A Bear - Poles Apart 