A Wholly Unsatisfactory Explanation On the Problem of Evil

And so, it's back to the horse beating. I've been thinking alot about why this problem of evil thing just won't go away. I know that there are plenty of reasons why we think that there is a "problem" with making our belief in God jive with the fact that there isn't just evil - but a fairly significant amount of evil in the world. Just this week, some dude in Oakland shot and killed four police officers, and here in SoCal, some lady killed her 18-month old daughter and left her body by the side of a freeway (she says it was an accident). Nonetheless, I completely see why, with all the evil in the world, we look to the heavens and demand to know why a loving God would allow such evils to exist. I guess, if I had to nutshell the problem, the problem (in the form of a question) goes a little like this: why does God, if he is all-knowing and totally good, permit evil? Like I said, I've been thinking alot about this lately, and I think that the answer may be this: evil just is. That's it. Evil is. It hit me while I was watching last Sunday's episode of Cold Case. The soundtrack for that episode was John Lennon songs. There's one (doesn't really matter which) that has a line that goes, "I tell them there's no problem, only solutions". I think that our problem of evil is a little like Lennon's lyric, only twisted. So, there are no answers, only questions. What I'm saying is that we may be asking a question for which there is no answer. Our questions are like John Lennon's solutions. We keep on giving them, hoping that we'll hit the right one (the one that we expect will give us an answer), but the real trick is, is that there is no answer to the question, 'why does God permit evil?'. This isn't an entirely unphilosophic outlook on the situation - since the point of philosophy is to ask questions. We ask, even in the face that we might never actually get to an answer or that our answer, despite all of our well-reasoned arguments, is wrong. This idea is, I'll admit completely unsatisfying. But, still I see no problem in including the idea that for some questions there may be no answers along with our list of possibilities. I know that humans want answers. We want them especially if we are talking about our beliefs in God. It's the answers that give us reasons to believe or to obey. This is unsatisfying, especially for the philosopher, because we are indoctrinated that every event must have a cause and so forth... we just cannot accept the notion that the answer why God permits evil is "because he does". If you think about it, that reason, in a way underpins all of our defenses and certainly it's the foundation of every theodicy out there. God has his reasons, we say. We just don't want to admit that a reason may be that his reason is that he has no reason. That's scary. Maybe for God, our lives (the ones that he watches 24/7 like Santa Claus), are like one big reality TV show. What we call "evil" are merely plot devices for God to move the plot along. Our evils are what they say in the biz "dramatic tension". It makes things interesting... for God. I remember hearing Miles Copeland, the brother of Stewart Copeland of the Police, saying that when he worked for the Moody Blues, he tried to get VH1 to do a Behind the Music on the band. He said that he told the execs that the band had been around a long time and was very successful, so they were a perfect example of a true music success story. He said that VH1 rejected the idea. Why? No dramatic tension. No drug overdoses, no rehabs, no backstabbing or drug-induced accidents in which the drummer loses a body part -- they weren't interesting enough for the show. Maybe it's the same for God. Maybe without evil, humans are like the Moody Blues. Plain boring and not much fun to look at. Still, this is unsatisfying. Worse yet, it paints God as some sort of sadist who screws with our lives for shits and giggles. My answer to this is 'oh well'. Look, God does a great many things that do not please us, because things happen to us. As much as we would like for there to be a reason, we gotta get hip to the fact that not only may we not find an answer, but also to the fact that there may be no answer! And really, no matter what God tells is is his answer, we won't be satisfied no matter what he says. We'd still ask him if there was another way that he could have accomplished the same result? God could tell us that things happen according to his plan, or to serve a greater good, or tell us "look, it doesn't matter how you die, all people die. What matters is that you go to heaven, which by the way you will". we'd still complain! If God told us, no matter how carefully his reason, we'd never say ok and have done with the question asking. We'd never understand his reasons becuse we can't understand his reasons, even if he draws diagrams. But God, lucky for us, doesn't ask us to understand his motives. He justs tells us to accept. Accept that God moves (mysteriously so) with no reason whatsoever -- at least none that we can ever understand. I know that this makes no one happy at all.

I Promised Someone That I'd Write A Chapter of My Book About How Much I Hate Him, but for Reasons Better Left Unsaid, I'll Merely Suggest It Here

I think that, in all of this writing, I've forgotten to ask myself one very important question -- why am I doing this at all? I was talking with my sister some time ago, and during our conversation, she said that anyone over any age ending with "teen" is too old to spend time tweeting, myspacing, or blogging. Since I am way over any age ending with teen, I naturally took offense to her comment. And, true to form, I kept my mouth shut. But that got me thinking... There has to be some reason why I'm doing this. And what my sister said is true -- there are people that are way too old to be spending otherwise productive time telling the world what they're doing right at this moment -- which is usually something not worth writing about, let alone even telling someone in an actual conversation. I mean, there is really no need that anyone know what Dave Matthews thinks about snail farts (he did this in a tweet). So I'm back to the question, why? Am I that much of an egotist that I feel that anyone else needs to know what I think about anything? Or, do I really have something valuable to say? I'd like to feel that my postion here, is that latter. I do feel that there is something that I might be able to do that might -- well, help. I know how incredibly egotistical that statement was. It is, and I wholheartedly cop to the fact that I am fairly egotistical. And like so may of my egotistical brethern, I've decided that what I need to do is write a book. I realize that there are a fair number of people my age who believe that there is some great American novel crammed up inside their head somewhere. Most of us get by entertaining the idea that we're frustrated writers without ever committing ink to page. And I admit, entertaining the idea that I have something to say that is also worth reading is a little more than arrogant. But that's me -- the frustrated would-be writer who thinks that there's some great thing in my head that only needs to come out. And it will be brilliant. Which leads me to this -- this blog. And of course, it leads to my subject of choice -- philosophy. We've all seen that this is a real winner of a subject. Of all the subjects in the world, my "calling" is to write about something that few people know and even fewer people care about. I know that the general attitude towards philosophy is negative. To a great degree, that attitude is well-deserved. Those who practice the philosophic arts are seen as arrogant overthinkers who prattle on about stuff that means nothing to no one, or they're the masters of overanalyzing the obvious. To that charge, I don't disagree. I've often struggled with the feeling that what I was studying was unproductive and useless ( I've, from time to time, used the phrase "intellectual masturbation" to describe what a great deal of philosophers do). Philosophy was spending too much time thinking about things that people, real people, don't care about. Even if people do care -- does it matter? Does any of it matter beyond that halls of academia? That was the thought that I held and shared with my fellow students in my most cynical moments, when I felt that what I was doing -- something that I considered to be a part of who I am -- was meaningless, useless, and unrewarding. I had to figure out why I and the entire world felt the way that we do about looking at the world philosophically. For me, it was something of an application problem. That is, I couldn't make the connection between what I was studying and what I saw when I stepped out of class. I couldn't see philosophy at work on the street level. The stuff that I was reading in class was clean and elegant, and most of all consistent -- it didn't reflect anything that I experienced in the world -- where things are messy and muddled and life forces you to not do or think the same way all of the time. In the classroom, there's no real welcome for the dreadfully messy and inconsistent people that I lived with, chatted up in line at Walmart, and talked to at bus stops who hadn't heard of Descartes or Frege and were in no way interested in learning how to construct a logically valid derivation. They didn't care, so I stopped caring. And because of that, I became increasingly frustrated with what I was studying. I was fed up with arguments and well-formed theories, and fed up with my fellow students and professors who seemed to not share my point of view. I kept coming back to that question: what use is all of this? I thought that I got some bad advice from a professor who suggested that I take a break from philosophy (since I had grown to hate it so thoroughly). I thought that there would be some sort of higher brained solution to solving my problem. That he would say to meditate or channel the spirit of Hume or something along those lines. No, it was just take a break. Well, being someone who just can't let anything go (like what they say about Jennifer Aniston), I didn't take a break completely, but I did long enough to get a grip on what I wanted to see -- I wanted to see what I was learning on the street. I wanted to see it where I lived. Eventually, I realized that I was seeing it all along. I had blinded myself by thinking (or rather believing) that there was no connection between what was in the book and what is in the world. This isn't uncommon. I had fallen victim to a bad case of academiaitis. I thought that philosophy was for academics, so guess where I saw it? Right. But it's everywhere. It's in the music we listen to, on the TV we watch, in movies (and not just Woody Allen ones), in our attitudes and outlooks on life, sex, religion, mortality and morality. It's in our favourite movie quotes, song lyrics, and everyday phrases. That's why I have this blog. That is why I like (not love) studying philosophy. I had heard somewhere that some physicist said that if you can't explain a scientific theory to an eight year old, you don't know what you're talking about. Well, it's not quantum physics, but the same holds true for philosophy. We've, meaning the academics, have held all this learning too close to our own breasts. We've forgotten who all of this is for -- to make the world a little more easy to figure out for everyone else, not just for ourselves. And if we can't explain it to others who aren't "like us", then we don't know what we're talking about. Instead of poo-pooing the notion that this stuff can and should be made easy (so easy in fact that you can learn it from watching an episode of Magnum P.I.), I feel that this is what my calling truly is. I know that, by doing this, I may be taking on more than I can do. I still say that I'm no philosopher ( not just because of a lack of qualifications, but also to call myself one seems a little more than slightly pretentious). My goal here is to create something at the very least "philosophic" -- something that those people who, like me, couldn't see it, will -- if not learn from, atl least get a slight kick from reading what I have to say. it may noy bear the official seal Philosophy, but I think that my will is good. And for that, Kant would be pleased. If I succeed, I'll convince some that it isn't all so useless. If I fail, well, as Nietzsche said, "what does not kill me makes me stronger".

Bad/Good Will Revisited

I'm a fan of classic horror flicks. In particular, I'm a fan of the gimmicky films of William Castle. For those who don't know, William Castle brought to us some of the most fantastic schlock (said in a complelely good way) films of the late 50s and early 60s ever brought to the theater house or drive-in. Castle's films include The Tingler, Macabre, 13 Ghosts, Mr. Sardonicus, Zotz!, Rosemary's Baby, and my personal favorite, The House on Haunted Hill relased in 1958. If one is inclined to simply watch movies and not have to think beyond the urge to take the occasional pee break, William Castle's movies totally satisfy that need for a fix. The cool thing is, is that beyond providing mindless entertainment, William Castle's movies often have an undercurrent of something philosophical. And since so much of the horror genre deals with evil-doing, much of the subtext in Castle's films is ethical. The House on Haunted Hill is no exception. The plot of the movie is pretty simple, there's this awfully rich fellow named Frederick Loren (played by Vincent Price -- you can't go wrong there!). Loren invites a group of not-so-rich guests to his house for a haunted house party. The five individuals that are told that, if they can spend a night in Loren's haunted house, he will give them $10, 000. The trick, Loren knows, is that his guests' chances for success are fairly slim, given that the house is abound with kiler ghosts. Each of Loren's guests accept his invitation because each needs the $10,000. So, as the film opens, Loren's guests make their way to the haunted mansion on the hill. The ethical question here is obvious. Loren's intentions are clearly in the wrong. not only is he exploiting the needs of his guests, but inaddition, he plans to kill his wife. At first glance it seems that Loren is a moral criminal, not to mention a would-be murderer. But, is that so clear once we look a little closer at the situation? First. let's throw out the Loren wanting to murder his wife bit. Murder, even if your wife is a total b, is always wrong. Even if we all think the dame deserves to die ( Loren's wife is, afterall, carrying on an affair with some dude named Trent) we can't justify killing her. But, that leaves Loren's challenge to his guests. If they spend a night in the house, they get money. Sounds like a fairly even exchange. We enter into this same type of exchange all the time. Some people work for pay, kids do chores for money, we pay for overpriced tickets to see our favorite band in concert, etc. Most of the time, the exchange of money for services rendered is non-exploitive. Morally, this is absolutely OK. Kant's Categorical Imperative (which I will refer to as C.I.) includes two principles by which we should (or is it must?) judge the rightness of our actions. Kant's first principle states that we act only on a maxim that we at the same time can make universal. That is, before we act, we ask, should everyone do this? For instance, if I wanted to steal an unguarded iphone sitting on a desk, I should ask, would I want everyone to do this? Would I have for a moral rule "if an iphone is unguarded, it is morally right to steal it"? The answer in this case is obviously no. I wouldn't want that for a maxim to be obeyed by everyone. Kant's second principle holds that we must treat other people as ends in themselves, not as mere means to our own ends. According to Kant's second principle, I cannot use others to further my own goals. So, if I decided to take philosophy classes because, no wait, bad example. If I make friends with Dante's mom because she has lots of spare cash floating around, and I really don't like her, but I enjoy the perks of her "friendship", then , according to Kant, I am morally wrong because I am using someone to further my own ends -- namely the fact that someone is spending their money to satisfy my wants. Kant's categorical imperative deals with absolute moral obligations (as opposed to hypothetical imperatives, which are binding on a person so long as that person desires to fuflil some result or end. For instance, if I want to lose weight, I have to diet and exercise. I'm only bound to diet and exercise so long as my end). As I noted, in the case of Frederick Loren, the situation seems to smack of exploitation. The people Loren invites need the $10,000, and they will do anything, including risking their own lives, to get it. But that's just it. Both sides are in it to get something. Loren's guests want Loren's money just as much as Loren may be inclined to exploit them. They are willing to do anything, even risk their own lives to get it. So here's my question: what does Kant say about mutually exploitive acts? Every one of Loren's guests wanted something (and that Trent guy wanted Loren's wife as well). They went to Loren's haunted house party knowing that there was a chance that they might not make the night. So let's look at Loren's "party" according to Kant's first principle of the C.I. Let's say that Loren constructs his maxim as such: "If you want to invite a group of people to your haunted house, be sure to offer them a large sum of money as to compensate them (or their heirs, if necessary) if anything bad should happen to them". That sounds fair. If Loren constructs his maxim that way, it seems that it has a whiff of fairness to it. I don't think anyone would be offended by this maxim. But, Loren thinks about his maxim. There's something wrong with it. It's not quite complete. So he reformulates it by adding a clause to protect him from those who accuse his maxim of exploitation. Loren adds: "If you want to invite a group of people to your haunted house, be sure that they are well-informed that the house is haunted and that the ghosts are dangerous, and be sure to offer them a large sum of money as to compensate them (or their heirs, if necessary) if anything bad should happen to them". I think, that, if Loren use this as his maxim, he's in the moral clear. Loren adds, they are getiting something from me as well, so it's not just me who is benefitting in this situation. With Loren in the clear on principle one, let's move on to the second principle. Kant's second principle states that we cannot use others as a mere means to our own ends. This means we cannot use others by way of coersion, manipulation, exploitation, force, etc. Kant's C.I. requires that we respect the dignity and autonomy of an individual to make rational moral choices for himself. If we are to make autonomous moral choices, we must enter into our decisions well-informed and free of coersion or manipulation. If we do not, then our choices were not rendered autonomously. It seems that Loren's guests entered into the agreement (an overnight stay for money) freely and knowingly. Loren's guests know that the house they will spend the night in is haunted. They know that they will get $10,000 if they spend an entire night there. They accepted Loren's invite and intend to leave the mansion $10,000 richer. So, Loren may say, so what if they all need the money, they all agreed to be here. If I, Frederick Loren, was to say anything about the matter, I'd say that they agreed to be exploited! So, Loren has thrown his opinion into the ring, and said that his guests agreed to be exploited. So now we ask, can a person agree to be exploited? Kant would say no. In this situation (and others similar to it -- like when a woman who works as a "dancer" says that she's not doing degrading work, but at least "gets paid" -- that's what Dante's mom says, anyway), the fact that both parties agree to the act doesn't make the act morally right. As the old saying goes, "two wrongs don't make a right". And this is what Kant thinks as well. Even if Loren says that his guests agreed to spend the night in his house, the situation still stinks of exploitation. Loren argues that his guests were getting paid for their stay -- but the fact is, is that Loren invited people who needed the money, not merely wanted it. They were willing to engage in a extreme act that they most likely would not have done if their situations were not so dire. In a sense, they were not free to do otherwise. The fact that their acceptances to Loren's challenge was made out of desperation, meant that their decision was not a truly autonomous decision. The offering of money was a form of coersion. But, wait, Loren cries -- they could have freely left the house at any time. They weren't forced to spend the entire night! True, but, we can say that the lure of money was so great (not to mention not seeming like a wuss) that they could not leave. Loren knew that, once he suggested that his guests were total wusses if they left, no one would leave. So he's still in the moral wrong. Loren can't say that this situation was excusable because his guests decided to attend his party. Kant's C.I. wants us to seek out moral rules that are universal. The categorical imperative requires that we consider all in our moral sphere, not merely the five people that we invite to our haunted house party. In this situation, Loren's guests may benefit, but we (collectively) lose. So, it seems that Loren's maxim wasn't universalizable, no matter how many clauses we add, we can't morally justify exploitation -- even if the exploitation is mutual. Our moral universe requires that we create rules that aren't just useful for throwing haunted slumber parties, but useful for everyone who is affected by our actions. For Kant, that "everyone" isn't limited to the people that we know, but covers everyone at all times in all places (including planets where soul-sucking botanists dwell). If we deny someone the right to do otherwise, even if we inform themof all the risks, we aren't respecting their ability to make rational moral choices -- which is exactly what Frederick Loren did in The House on Haunted Hill. In picking people who needed the money, no matter how well informed his guests were, no matter if they didn't leave after he informed them that they could, Loren used them as a means to his own ends, and deprived them of the respect that being a morally autonomous being requires. And because of that, Frederick Loren violates the principles of Kant's categorical imperative. And, let's not forget, the guy wanted to kill his wife!

Conversation Enders #9: The Not-So Magical Misery Tour

They say that you can tell a person's personality by what kind of music they listen to. In reality, telling a person's personality by way of their musical preferences is intended to be one of those "tests" that people think up to screen out people that they think are beneath them. To give an example, if you're into Phillip Glass and the Kronos Quartet and someone you meet at a gathering of mutual friends gushes on and on about how cool Toby Keith is -- well, you get the idea. I had heard of this so-called personality test during a conversation with a "baby boomer", that is those individuals born roughly between 1945 and 1964. The people who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out, and are still convinced that everything they said and did was pop cultural gold. I think what he really was trying to do was convince me that any music that he liked was cool, therefore suggesting his superiority, and that my liking the FooFighters was somehow akin to primitiveness. I was a knuckledragger. Although I recall he liked the song with the video that's like those Mentos commercials. It was "inventive" he said, kind of like A Hard Day's Night. I remember, before I completely lost interest in his going on about how cool the 60s was, ( although I swear he was a teenager in the 70s), he was yammering about how bands today had lost their sense of humor, and how the art was missing from modern music, and that it's all about making money nowadays... He was suggesting that the music of the 60s, with its emphasis on art and making the listener feel something, not only provided the soundtrack by which to pick up chicks to, but also influenced the way that people thought about life and themselves -- how we interact with the world and how we feel connected to everyone around us. This was something, he said, that today's music simply does not do. You could tell a man by his music, he claimed. If the baby boomers are right, and no good music was made after 1969 ( which may be true in the case of Wham!), and if there is a definitive link between personality and music preference,then there is no better personality test than the question which Beatles do you like? For those who would answer the question, " I like all of the Beatles music", shame on you. Liking the Beatles is not merely a matter of liking their music generally, it is a gauge on how you see the world. Which era you like tells the world what kind of person you are. There a two basic ways of gauging personality type according to the Beatles: 1) early vs. late Beatles 2) Lennon or Mc Cartney If you say that you prefer to listen to "early" Beatles, roughly covering the years from 1962 to 1966 (when they stopped performing in public, unless you discount their "rooftop" performance), then your personality is described as follows: you're conventional. You like things to be clear, simple and easy to understand (like many early Beatles lyrics). You're likely conservative, and most importantly, you don't readily accept change. You like the Beatles who wore the matching suits and didn't sing about revolutions and posed naked on album covers with their girlfriends -- and you like the world to be that way, too. If, by chance, you dig the late Beatles, then you're open and progressive. You may be slightly militant, or at least you talk as if you are (but more than likely you're "out, in"). You've probably referred to authority on at least one occasion as "the Man". You like confusion, chaos, and of course, smoking weed. Your mind is a changing place, and according to you, like your mind, that's the way the world is. The test is similar with whether you prefer the lyrics of John Lennon or Paul Mc Cartney. If you like Paul, then you're a romantic. You like silly little love songs, and there's absolutely no problem with that according to your world view. Love for you is between you and the gender of your choice. And, you don't have a problem with making money. If you prefer Lennon, you're the edgy rebel. You speak your mind and you're not afraid of pissing people off. Love isn't just between you and your girfriend that nobody else seems to like, but is something that involves the whole world. And not just love, but peace, too. You have a seious problem with those people who sold out ( but we all know that you've got a little tucked away in your pocket as well). Funny, no one ever says what kind of personality you have if you like George. The idea is, is that this "test" isn't supposed to be just an icebreaker or a topic of conversation that is meant to take up time but not teach us anything. It's supposed to be a way to gain insight into who we are -- as any music that we listen to is supposed to reflect who we are. Sometimes this assumption is right. For instance, I know that gloomy people tend to listen to gloomy music. Usually someone who describes themself as a philistine wouldn't listen to Mozart or something supposedly "refined" or high class. Yeah, I get that but, if you ask me, this question -- and I mean this question gauging a personality (and by extension a worldview) by what "era" of Beatles a person likes -- is a prime example of philosophic overthinking. Now that I'm writing this, I don't not suspect that some philosophy student thought up this question. It reeks of philosophy. And leave it to a philosopher to overthink a preference. If you don't believe that this actually happens, overthinking preferences that is, there is a book currently on the shelves of any number of local bookstores called The Beatles and Philosophy. It sets itself apart from all of the other (hundreds) of books about the Beatles, in that its authors have somehow found a way to overthink meaning into the Beatles' (generally thought of as ) pop songs. The book, in all of it's philosophic significantness is not so much a homage to a seminal pop band as it is a monument to the power of overthinking. I would give an example or two, but since I endowed my own The Beatles and Philosophy book to the logic lab (big clue) and since I am way too lazy to google anything, I can't give you an idea of how philosophic overthinking goes hideously wrong. But, let me preempt myself here -- I'm not saying that the Beatles weren't saying anything, sure they did! Afterall, that's what the 60s was about (so they say anyway). And I am not, repeat, NOT trying to say that philosophers shouldn't look for the deeper or hidden meanings behind otherwise seemingly unphilosophic things. But I really don't think that they were going for something that deep. I think that what they were trying to do is make money and, eventually, get high. Paul Mc Cartney said that what drove he and John Lennon to songwriting is their mutual desire to write tunes for Frank Sinatra. Sometimes, even with things that have meaning, we read more into it than there is. I recall hearing that Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Well, sometimes a song is just a song. I think that when you've taken to finding the Leibnizian view of God and the universe as articulated by George Harrison's "Within You, Without You" or the Humean subtext of "Hello, Goodbye", you're going a little too far ( I don't know if there are Humean subtexts to any of the songs on Magical Mystery Tour or if there is any Leibniz to be found on Sgt. Pepper. I made those examples up). What's funny about finding the deeper philosophy in Beatles lyrics is that it ignores the fact that there are even funnier "meanings" to be found in the songs without consulting Spinoza or Nietzsche. Ask yourself these questions: Are they really singing "everybody smoke pot" during the coda of "I am the Walrus"? or, how was everybody snowed by John Lennon's obvious lie about what "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was really about (which is kind of like how people back in the 70s had no clue that the Village People were gay. They sang songs about macho men and hanging at the Y! Hello?!?), or how is it that Charles Manson really did get what the song "Blackbird" was about? It's these questions that remain unanswered and need to be. By the way, if no one has noticed that the tenor of this post has drifedway into the hypocritical, I'm more clever than I thought. So clever, in fact that ... And for the record, I prefer late Beatles (White Album specifically) to early and I'm a fan of the songs of George Harrison, especially "Only a Northern Song" from Yellow Submarine. The movie sucked eggs, but the song is cool.

What To Write When You Have Absolutely Nothing Useful To Say

Chuck Klosterman wrote that science fiction is philosophy for stupid people. I don't disagree. I heard somewhere or from someone that philosophy is all about probing and nuance -- the philosopher seeks to find the meaning behind the meaning. I guess if that's the case, then the clobber you over the head style of Star Trek really doesn't leave room for guesswork. I'm not slamming Star Trek. Hey, I'm a fan. But sometimes it really -- well... ok, you've got a multiethnic, multiracial, intergalactic cast (did we hit all of the bases, here?), top it all off with TV's first interracial kiss (despite the fact that Kirk and Uhura were forced to do it), and a Russian guy who pronounces his 'v's like 'w's -- well, do we have to look too hard to see where this is all going? * you want to know how unsubtle Star Trek is? There's an episode where there are these dudes that have black on one side of their faces and white on the other. They are having this big conflict with people who have white on one side of their faces and black on the other. That's symbolic of... well, can you guess? By the way, the Russian alphabet has a 'v' in it. I know. I endured two years of that blasted language in high school. My point is, is that, even as a philosopher, I kind of like my thinking to go easy. I don't like subtle or nuanced. I like in your face, I like flashpots, and fireworks, and subtitles! I like movies with full frontal nudity for absolutely no reason whatsoever that show violence in slow motion (wow, I drifted a little into Dennis Leary-land there). I used to sit in class and try to find ways to explain the most complex philosophical theory in one sentence of less. Because, I realized, I'm really a stupid person. What's worse is that I'm a stupid person who realizes how stupid I am, yet maintains the delusion that I am smarter than other people. I guess, now that I'm thinking the word isn't so much smarter than cleverer. Afterall, I managed to snare a philosophy degree, didn't I? But then, if I were clever at all, I would have pursued something a little more marketable than a career in philosophy, wouldn't I? No, no, this won't do. I've got to lay off the negativity. It really is counterproductive. Now I know what all of those yahoos on Jerry Springer are going through! You know, the guy on the panel who is married to the woman who is sleeping around with his dad, his brother and half of the guys in (insert derogatory redneck term here) who insists that he still loves "his woman"? That's me. I've gotten nothing but pain from philosophy. She sleeps around and makes other little theories that I don't like and don't want to take care of with other people, makes me feel intellectually inadequate and humiliates me in public, but I love her. I'll stick with her even if she takes me on national TV and parades every guy with no teeth and hockey hair that she's slept with in front of my face. I'm smitten. I'm the faithful idiot. I'm not even a useful idiot! Wait a minute. Where is all of this going? I think that, besides going absolutely nowhere with this, what I want to say all of this is working up to what I am about to confess right here and now: I once accused someone that I know (and that's "know" in the sense that I more know of him than know him) on several occasions of being a "fence rider". It all has to do with my objections to agnosticism and my position that someone who wants to profess any sort of belief in God should pick a side. Either go full-on atheist or pick a religion. Since I have picked a side (also condemning myself to eternal hellfire and damnation), I, for the life of me, can't figure out why someone would ever claim being an agnostic. But that's just a personal problem. Apparently others can handle 'we can't really be sure if there's a God, so I'm not going to make a guess' better than I. Well, I confess. As someone who had the gall ( I would have written 'balls", but that would have been a little crude) to say that I'm a "secular christian" I admit that I am the biggest fence rider of all -- the atheist who claims that they still have "christian" values. Besides being a bit of a contradiction, it's just plain stupid. But then, I don't deny being that, either. Oh wait, I think that Star Trek:TNG might be coming on Spike right now. Gotta go. Enter the banjos!

Candy is Dandy, but Liquor is Quicker

I've said before that ethics is the only philosophy that matters. And I still think that's true. It is. But that has nothing to do with the fact that studying ethics is so damn boring! There's really not much to it. There are what? maybe a half dozen or so ethical theories out there that we deal with. There's Utilitarianism, Egoism, Kantianism, Relativism, Virtue Ethics, and Divine Command theory. Sure, there are different versions -- strong/weak, rule/act -- but there's pretty much nothing much to do after you've learned the various moral theories. Which makes it pretty easy when you think of it. Unlike all those 'nobody's ever really going to know for sure, so what we're really trying to find is the most plausible answer' business, ethics is pretty much on the ground. Real solutions for real people. No one really knows whether God exists or not, or if we live in a world of appearances or things-in-themselves (ugh!), but we all know the choice between whether we should cheat on our wife or tell the "dancer" that we really don't want that table dance (but then, are lapdances really cheating?) or whether or not we should beat the shit out of that neighbor kid who won't turn down his car stereo at three in the morning (or beat the tarnation out of the guy at the library with the most obnoxious ringtone ever). Look, if we see a drowning guy and we're the only guy who can save him, and our options are to jump in and save him, or keep the $38 New Balance shoes that we just bought (for a good price) at Big 5 dry, we wouldn't be surprised if everyone thought were a douche for not wanting to get our shoes wet. And ethics goes just about like this all the time: situation pops up, ethical dilemma, refer to handbook, apply applicable ethical theory, and volia! problem solved. Works even quicker on sitcoms. And that's the way it's worked for centuries. Centuries. Oh sure, every so often they'll trot out something new like Rawl's "veil of ignorance", but really, any utilitarian can get you similar results without having to forget what race you are or how much money you have. It's all fine and dandy how it works, but it's just so damn boring!!!! Which brings me to a class I had some time ago. It was a class on intutionism. If you're not familiar, like all of ethics, intuitionism asks 'what is good?'. Here's my attempt to nutshell something that is impossibly unnutshellable: G.E. Moore argued that the term 'good' meaning moral good, is undefinable. So, if we try to say that good (in the ethical sense) means something or is equal to a quality like 'pleasure', then our problem is, is that what is pleasuarble is not always good. Doing heroin is certainly pleasurable, but most people would agree that it is not 'good'. Pleasure is a quality that is not common to all 'good' things. Moore likened the attempt to define good to an attempt to define the color yellow. To describe yellow, most of us would name yellow things such as bananas or taxicabs, or point to something yellow like a person with Hepatitis C. According to Moore, we can't define what yellow is. We know 'yellow' intuitively. The same goes for what is 'good'. I'm not bringing this up in order to discuss the merits of the theory, other than to say that this theory is just about the easiest thing to understand without having any ability whatsoever to explain how I do. And that doesn't make for a very exciting theory. What I did learn that quarter, however, is exactly how to make an otherwise boring topic like ethics interesting... Alcohol. Yep. Get liquored up before class. I remember that, on one occasion, I had partaken a bit of the liqiud happiness before class (the one on intuitionism I mentioned before), and the class was marvelous! I can't really remember what we discussed, or what I may have said (except for the fact that I thought that everything everyone said was funny), but I remember that, at least for that moment, intuitionism was the most interesting topic on the planet, and that everyone should be so lucky to have the opportunity to discuss something so fascinating. So, whenever I watch COPS, I think (now) that it's not that these poor drunken bar brawlers are the stupid hicks that everyone thinks that they are. In fact, one could argue that they're learned philosophers (and not just in the way that every drunk guy becomes an instant philosopher). It's that they've figured out how to make moral conflicts, like bar brawling much more interesting! Morality is better (or at least funner) when you're under the influence! No wonder so many thought experiments have to do with using drugs.

Intergalactic Botanists Will Swallow Your Soul

To rid myself of that Murray Head song "One Night In Bangkok", I decided that I would do a little bit of TV watchin'. I was in a kind-of 1980s, Cold War-era flicks mood, so I started the night by watching a little bit of Red Dawn. I breezed through Wargames, and was lamenting the fact that I didn't have Gotcha! on DVD. I was listening to "99 Luft Balloons" and was trying to remember which 80s compilation CD had "Der Kommissar" on it, when I glanced over at my DVD shelf and spotted ET. ET: the Extra-Terrestrial is perhaps the film of my generation. Who could not like the story of the lovable, non-threatening little alien from a billion light years away? And given the fact that the year ET was released, 1982, saw the release of a decidedly un-friendly alien movie, John Carpenter's remake of The Thing, it's easy to see why people flocked to see the cuddlier alien movie. For what it's worth, I like The Thing. I'm assuming that everyone with eyes that see and ears that hear has either seen or heard about this movie. But, if you haven't: a well-meaning, adorable, intergalactic horticulturist gets so caught up in looking at the local earth fauna that his ride home ditches him. The newly homeless fellow stumbles upon a nice suburban family (who are neither afraid of falling victim to a face-hugger nor worried about their new alien friend subjecting them to the time-honored alien tradition of probing), he squats for awhile with the middle child of the family, a boy named Elliott. Eventually the celestial traveler and his young companion jimmy up a subspace communication device and ET's peeps swing back 'round to pick him up. All's well that ends well. Some people see a heart-warming tale of the power of love and friendship. Others see a parable (or is it allegory?) of the story of Christ. Me, I see one of the worst moral offenders in film history. Assuming that the ethics of 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant apply to visiting aliens, this little bundle of interstellar joy has some explaining to do about his behavior. Kant's moral philosophy is primarily concerned with two objectives: 1) moral principles that have universal applicability, and 2) our acts are performed from obligation -- no matter the consequences. The first formulation of Kant's categorical imperative states that we undertake no act that cannot at the same time be made universal law (or something like that). The way I see it, this one isn't really a problem. Well, not yet. It's Kant's second formulation that has my finger pointing at this so-called friend to all children. Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative holds that we are to treat others as ends in themselves, that is, we are not to use others are a mere means to our own ends. So, say I want to rob a bank. I don't have a car, but you do. I ask you to drive me over to the bank while I step in to go take care of some "things". While I'm in the bank, I knock over the joint. I didn't tell you why I was going or what I was going to do once I got there. I merely used you for your car. So, according to Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative, I have used you as a mere means to my ends. And that's morally wrong. And that, using Elliott as a mere means to his ends, is precisely what that alien did. A test for whether we are being used as someone else's means to their ends is whether we have entered into an agreement with that person freely and knowingly (meaning we weren't coerced or forced). Now I know, you say that it was Elliott who pursued ET. This is true. He did lure ET into his house with Reece's Pieces. And Elliott did assume responsibility for the alien. But, I think that Elliott did this unaware of what assuming responsibility for ET fully meant. What ET did, was not allowing Elliott to take care of him -- he literally bonded his life to Elliott's! Maybe there's another version of the movie where ET sits Elliott down and explains what "taking responsibility" means where he comes from; but I doubt that, in Elliott's mind, that "responsibility" meant feeling hunger when ET was hungry, or feeling sleepy when ET was sleepy. Nor do I think that Elliott signed on to experience drunkenness when ET decided to go on a bender, or to sexually assault a female classmate under ET's mind control. Worse yet, ET's life bonding nearly killed Elliott when ET decided that I was better to die than to live in earth (real subtle, Spielberg!). Not to mention, that Elliott was, what? Twelve at the most? Could a child of that age really have made a competent decision to endanger the lives of himself and his family and have his house ransacked by the feds all in an effort to make a phone call?!? I think not! I think that even Kant had a point where a kid is too young to make decisions that no only affect him, but the universe as a whole. And while we're at it, I don't think that back on ET's planet that they would have welcomed such an interruption of their lives. I don't think that almost getting a kid shot by an FBI guy (yes, I'm using the original theatrical release) is something that we want to say is universalable. Some people watch ET and see a movie that they want to share with their childern and their grandchildren. I see a movie I'd only show to a kid that I didn't like (which reminds me, I think that I'll invite that Dante over for popcorn and some DVDs).